hens and chicks
At the nursery we end up growing a lot of Sempervivum (hen’s and chicks). While most of the perennials we grow come in as plugs, sempervivum are one of few we do from scratch. It’s as simple as plucking a baby semp off it’s mother plant, and re-potting it in it’s own pot. If you have 10 sempervivum in February you could easily have 100 by fall. In good conditions Sempervivum species thrive and multiply abundantly, for this reason we maintain a small stock of potted sempervivum for propagation use. The photo below is of one of our breeding semps.
As the title suggests, this is one very large sempervivum. I’ve seen some big ones in my time as a gardener but this one takes the cake.
Overfilling this 8″ pot this sempervivum measures up roughly to the size of a dinner plate. It’s really quite something. I would love to put these into mass production. A houseleek at every doorstep!
This post reminds me of a post I did earlier this spring about a very small primula.
Overtime Season: Day 3
You know you can find a garden in the most unlikely of places. A friend of mine dabbles with gardening and although he takes a completely different approach to it then myself, he ends up with some beautiful results. A busy guy by nature, he spends much of his time following electronic music, longboarding, snowboarding and chasing women. All of these ambitions mixed with a fulltime + job leads to very little time for one’s garden. Sometime’s his container garden gets a bit crispy in the summer, and yet some things just thrive. A perfect example of this is his sempervivum pots.
Incredible to say the least, he’s got a good collection of different varieties and they always look extremely healthy. Here is a plant that thrives in dry conditions, sometimes my garden is a bit too lush and semps don’t enjoy wet feet. He sent me this photo the other day and I thought it worthy to put up here.
If you want a low maintenance garden pot, try out sempervivums, fool proof and awesome!
