Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Indoor succulent plant gardens
Aloes succulents and fat plants grow easy indoors in pots or containers. Good drainage and strong light is all that they need. Here are two indoor gardens. A succulent indoor garden in a flat container with mainly fat plants from South Africa and a desert garden in a bowl with succulents and aloes from Namibia. The soil mix contains dolomite gravel, coarse sand and soil. A very weak plant food is given every 6 months with a sprinkling of a few Magnesium sulphate crystal between the plants. (A quarter teaspoon at the most.)



click on the photo to enlarge. The succulent plants in this indoor garden from South Africa. The white plant at the back is a Cotyledon, next row from the left is Aloe davyana, Aloe hybrid in the center and to the right back. Front row from the left is Euphorbia mammilaris. Gasteria species, Gasteria x Aloe hybrid and a group of Aloe brevifolia plants. The ground cover is two Crassula sp. The container is watered thoroughly and then permitted to dry out.



click on the photo to enlarge. This is a desert garden with plants from Namibia. The back row left to right:- mesemb, Tylecodon species, Aloe variegata, Euphorbia gariepina. Front left to right:- mesemb, Cotyledon species, the small plants are Euphorbia juttae, Aloe melanacantha and the small plant to the right of Aloe melanacantha is Anacampseros buderiana. This garden receives only enough rain water to damp the soil. It is then permitted to dry out. It may be necessary to merge the bowl in rain water once a year to rinse out salts or better would be to replace the growing medium with a fresh mix.
For more information and tips see cultivating succulent plants in pots and containers

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello again, after reading your post, not just looking at the pictures, please disregard my question about the soil.
cheers Gisela
If you are interested to read about my family,
I have another webpage:
http://bach-gisela.com
cheers

Anonymous said...

Ericat, thanks for your help on the mesembs. I have another question for you, about Brunsvigia josephinae. According to sanbi:

Plants occur in the winter rainfall area from the western Karoo, Worcester, Malgas to Willowmore. They are found usually on cooler and exposed southern slopes in sandy to clay soils in broken renosterveld , mostly in Malmesbury shale, limestone and weathered sandstone.

1. I can find Worcester on a map, but not Malgas and Willowmore. Are they in the same vicinity?

2. Is "western Karoo" the same as the little Karoo and succulent Karoo, or do they mean the western Great Karoo?

3. What kind of soil pH are we talking about? Weathered sandstone sounds acidic, but the limestone is limey (alkaline), no?

Thanks. I love your garden -- I wish I had room for Aloe ferox.

Anonymous said...

Wish you a very
Happy Easter,
Frohe Ostern,
Gisela

ericat said...

mmw
Thank you for the interesting questions.
We found Willwmore it is eastern border of the Great Karoo and Malgas is near Swellendam on the Breederiver. Beautiful Aloe ferox habitat. I think we must visit there. We have been to Swellendam, but not Malgas.
Correct about the western Karoo, that is not a locality but just an area most often of the Great Karoo, but it can be any western portion.
Correct about the soil pH.
Aloe ferox is a very special aloe. It is tough, grows large but will grow in a pot, it has beautiful color variations in the flowers and makes excellent hybrids. Best of all is the medicinal qualities.
If you are interested in lilies then I can give you a contact of somebody I know who is also into lilies from Napier. contact me euricat (the at sign) gmail.com

Anonymous said...

Its beautiful! It's like a miniature world with such interesting plants.