Many people are often confused about cacti and succulents, all types of which have developed the ability to store large quantities of water in their tissue as a guard against drought. What is the difference? Well, it’s not too difficult to understand. We should start of by saying cacti and other succulents for all cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti. Got it? So what is a succulent? People often say that such and such a fruit looks ‘succulent,’ meaning that it looks full of juice and ready to eat. The difference between succulent plants and others is that they can store large amounts of water in their tissue, because over many thousands of years they have had to put up with growing and developing in the arid regions of this planet. If they hadn’t developed the ability to store water they would have died out a long time ago.
Many succulents have also developed a coating of ‘hair’ over their surface to reduce loss of water due to drying winds (many of the cacti). Others just have thick fleshy leaves. Some species have included poisons in their sap to put off grazing animals, ie, sedum, aeonium, euphorbia and so on. Some curious individuals have reduced their size so much that they have developed most of their bodies underground, like the Lithops of South Africa which just looks like small pebbles. Still others have developed thick fleshy underground roots in which to store water in hard times.
Surprisingly, many of the succulents which are not cacti are quite easy to root as cuttings – sedums and crassulas particularly – but this is only done when the plants get too ‘leggy,’and they start to form a stem which is too hard to support leaves. Bear in mind that all succulents tend to grow slowly and so cuttings should be taken so they are small – say just a few inches long. No rooting powder is needed really, but a well-drained sandy or stony compost is essential, and they should be kept in good light, but not direct sunlight.
Footpath
When it rains sufficiently heavily to make the lawn soggy, one starts to wonder whilst tidying the potting shed, cleaning tools, writing labels and so on, how to get to the flower beds to cut flowers, dead-head them, prune or apply fertilizer. Of course the time to start thinking about it and doing something about it is when it’s dry, when there is no risk of damaging the lawn by walking on it. I think it’s always a good idea to put down a natural footpath to help you get about the garden and lead you right to your flower beds. My view is that clay bricks make the best type of footpath, but stones or gravel are just as effective. The main thing is that such pathways will allow the growth of grass through them, which has a softening effect. You can’t get that with concrete. When you are planning a nice pathway to help you get to your plants in the ‘wet,’ you must remember that you will need to cut the grass at some point either with a machine or a string cutter, so you must make the surface flush with the grass otherwise you’ll damage the blades.
Often borders have gaps to allow for the sowing of annuals and plants which are given a short life in the open garden – such as bulbs grown in pots – and put out whilst they do their stuff and lifted when they have finished flowering. Plant bulbs, pot and all, into the ground when they are producing their flower spikes, and deep enough to hide the pot. After they have finished flowering, the thing to do is to lift them and place them somewhere out of the way where their leaves can continue to produce food to nourish next year’s flowers in the developing bulbs. There will come a time when the leaves die off completely, and their resting time comes, which is the time to pot them into a larger pot or into the same size pot after removing the old compost.
Many bulbs perform best when they are left in the same pot undisturbed for years. Until next week may your God go with you wherever you may be.
