Category: Gardening

Christmas in July

Grow your own presents – succulents are easy and rewarding.

The adverts for functions and fairs talking about Christmas in July made me start thinking about presents.

Don’t know about you but I always run out of money at Christmas time. This year, I’ve decided I’m going to make my presents and for the ones I have in mind, now is the time to start.

Imagine gorgeous little succulent gardens.

Succulents are very rewarding and easy to grow. My friend Ginny moved into a house that has loads of succulents. Initially, she wasn’t a fan and silently vowed that she’d replace them all with “proper flowers”. Yet, two years of gardening has taught her to love all the various types. Pinks, reds, purples, greens and each type produces a fabulous flower.

They don’t ask for much water either.

She’s always breaking bits off and sticking them into the ground in a different spot, to see if they change colour. Succulents that are green in the shade suddenly go bright red in the sun. Most of them have a very shallow root system and grow easily from a little bit.

But you can also grow them from a single leaf. This is how you do it.

Gently twist the leaf off (take a bottom leaf so you don’t trash the mother plant). You’ll see that sap oozes from the place on the leaf where it was removed.

Put the leaf on a piece of paper towel on the window sill, or some sunny spot, for a few days until it forms a scab. Wait for that scab, otherwise, the leaf might rot.

Once the leaf has formed the scab place it on top of some soil. Keep the soil moist (not soaking—just moist). After a few weeks, you’ll see that it starts to grow roots. If you leave it, the roots will eventually go down into the soil, but that would also be a good time to plant your baby succulent in a different pot.

Another awesome thing about succulents is that they don’t need much soil. So you can grow a few different varieties in one pot. This looks super cool.

They seem to grow well in old tins—we’ll talk about ways to jazz up tins next week.

Scout around your neighbourhood for different succulents and start a little nursery people. Feel free to send us pictures.

Happy growing!

Sibo

Rubble Rousing

Use your imagination… things do not have to be as they are.

Gardening can be an expensive hobby, but does not have to be.

My friend, Ginny, has become an avid gardener.

When they first moved into their house the front yard was bare. Obviously, the people who had lived there previously had tried planting grass, but then a water shortage hit and it died. There were a nice variety of succulents along one wall, with various bits of droopy vegetation decorating the fence.

Ginny and her lovely husband jumped in and decided a raised bed would be the way to go. They made a round one and filled it with teensy spinach plants. The spinach flourished… but the birds devoured most of it before they could. Summer arrived and it shrivelled up and died despite being watered. They decided to wait a while before planting anything else.

Then my friend had a run-in with cancer and to keep herself occupied and turn her brain off, she attacked the front garden.  She sculpted, laid and dug, all by the seat of her pants. So sometimes things worked out and sometimes they didn’t. The garden shop lady nearly died laughing when she discovered that she’d laid garden paths with gravel but had no weed cloth underneath. She bought the cloth but discovered it was nasty to work with and did not, in fact, actually do the job. The weeds still appeared.

Fast forward eight months. Ginny had been ogling out some building rubble up the road from their house.

“I want some of that,” she declared.

Her not-so-lovely husband rolled his eyes. “No! You’ll have to find somebody else to help you steal rubble from the side of the road.”

So she enlisted her daughter’s help and they raided the pile. But there was a dude at the house who gave them the thumbs up, so it wasn’t actually stealing after all.

She laid out that rubble in the same raised circle bed that they’d originally planted the spinach in. Piled blocks on top of each other until it looked appealing. Then she mixed a sloppy bowl of dark brown Tile Magic grout and tile bond liquid and gave the whole structure a quick wash of colour. Luckily they also had lots of compost from all the leaves and garden refuse to fill it up with earth.

The end result… a fabulous swirl in the garden full of herbs and flowers.

Get creative folk!

Sibo