If you’ve ever wanted to grow Lithops from seed then you really should be following along as Lithops Stories grows Lithops from seeds.

Here’s an update, and the Lithops seedlings are looking awesome.

I find the links, you click the links. See how it works?

Plantgasm has been planting succulents into pirate heads.

Here’s a photo I borrowed of the pouring of the soil into the pirate heads. Click through for the rest of the photos, including the finished Succulent Pirate Heads.

I must be doing something very important today that I feel the need to outsource my blogging all day.

Here, have another link. Water When Dry has a beautiful branched Aloe ramosissima just recently planted.

I’m outsourcing my blogging today.

Here’s a link for you to go visit. Andrew would like help identifying a potential Aloe purchase, although the consensus is it’s an A. “Carmine”.

1. Our first tumblr! Mark is a customer who documents his succulents in lots of photos on I Can Stop Tomorrow, which means, I think, that he really can’t stop tomorrow. You can start here with a non-succulent post, because his Protea was starting to bloom in October! So early for a “Late Mink”.

2. Candy “Sweetstuff” recently lost a large Opuntia that bloomed like crazy. Check out her trip to the Huntington greenhouses.

3. Plantgasm was already on the list, but I thought I would bring your attention to this post of pirates and succulents. Why? Because there aren’t enough posts about pirates and succulents in the world. Google it yourself and see what I mean!

Apparently there were a lot of white-flowering lithops in Iowa recently. Plants are the Strangest People has the photographic evidence.

Pretty.

Liza at Good to Grow has had some cactus problems recently and asked us for some help. Hopefully everything will be fine with her cactus cuts going forward.

Xeriscape Ninjas came and visited the nursery recently and lived to blog about it.

Jason appears to have been well behaved while they were here.

Photos ensued. Go check it out already!

Recently popping up on flickr is a nice photo of the nursery by Yumtan.

Spiny column cacti, agave and proteas all in one clean shot, with the bamboo in the background.

Plantgasm has a great closeup video of spider mites in action. If you go for that sort of thing.

Plants are the Strangest People has posted updated photos of the Euphorbia flanaganii var. cristata they got from us. Nice growth!

The Morton Report has Succulent Shutters.

“Baylor Chapman of Lila B. Designs tucks succulents into repurposed shutters in her contemporary, urban garden.” City chic indeed.

Urban verbiage too!

Alessi is discounting their cactus line of teapots, mugs, bowls and more, 20% off through the end of the month.

Also, enjoy this article about a cactus-y sculpture made out of coffee stirrers called the Hyperbolic Coffee Cactus.

All Andrew’s Plants has some new rain-dripped hardy spurges in Canada. How hardy? He’ll find out this winter.

Ant Plants, live from Indonesia! With photos of ants and plants, and ants in the plants.

(In case you were wondering, we’re talking Myrmecodia and Hydnophytums here).

Garden Rant is pimping out easy to assemble raised beds. They’re giving them away now too! If someone wants to send me a free easy to assemble raised bed, I’ll pimp ’em out too.

And they have a post about searching for plants online, featuring Loree’s [added: And Megan Hansen. and Patricia Cunningham, see comment below] newest tool, Plant Lust. I didn’t know! Now I do.

We were forecast for hail this weekend, but it held off in the Berkeley area. Apparently they got quite a bit in Davis, as reported by Gerhard of Bamboo and More. Click through to see the Hail! and the damage to Gerhard’s succulents.

We covered all the soft succulents at the nursery Saturday night, so we were prepared. Now, we had a whole bunch of hail storms this winter that we weren’t prepared for, so we were lucky this time.

Welcome Lithops Stories to the Blogroll. These are some tricky little plants to grow and you can follow along with Rika in Germany.

Posts to start with? How about:

• Lots of little baby lithops here.
• The art of splitting among the split rocks.
• Pretty flowers

While Oregon Cactus Blog has gone shopping, they’ve left behind some Euphorbias to enjoy. It’s been 10 days now, do you think they’re back yet?

Click through for all the pretty photos on Flickr.

1. First up we have a peachy Echinopsis with not one but two flowers from Annibel.
2. Secondly, we see there was a “Happy Cactus” for Cinco de Mayo. I’m not happy about it at all. From Shaire.
3. Lastly we find a round of cactus and succulents on a bench from Robert Miles Design. From the left going clockwise, Mammillaria, Parodia, Espostoa, Ferocactus, Astrophytum, Echeveria, Pachyveria(?), Pleiospilos.

That was it for flickr today, nothing else new there. I wish people would upload more photos.

Besides the link to the bees and beetles below, that is.

A really nice blooming Pediocactus simpsonii photo taken in Colorado, as found on flickr. Candy colored flowers. Did I mention the colors look like they could be made into spun sugar ribbon candy?

Good to Grow asked their experts about taxes and plants, and Expert Ed had an interesting answer.

Expert EZ Ed Johnson:

Q. If plants were considered “people” like corporations are considered to be “people,” which plant or tree do you think would find the most tax loopholes to pay the least amount of taxes?

A. It’s hard to squeeze anything out of a cactus.

Did you get your taxes in on time? Or did you have your cacti handle it all for you?

The first of the Garden Show reviews.

Googly-eyed Cactus by Sproutopia at the SF Garden Show, via Far Out Flora with Sproutopia’s Dinosaurs via Garden Wise Guy.

Focusing on the structures from Garden Porn, including the succulent wall panel shed.

I’ll update as more blogs post their reviews, so let me know as they appear.

From a magazine apparently called Candy and Cactus, there’s a store in Toronto that sells plants and toiletries interspersed in the aisles.

Here’s some Haworthia and an ice cream case:

An orchid among the shaving creams:

Photo credits: Mikaël Lavogiez

What is up with a magazine called Candy and Cactus anyway?

Hort Log has some very nice Hoya bloom photos, and even goes to the trouble to explain the differences between a couple of types of Hoyas that are commonly confused.

Old Brand New likes to put cactus and succulents into dinnerware, especially if they have handles. It makes it easier to water the plants. I hope Old Brand New isn’t over-watering the plants since the dinnerware doesn’t look like it has drain holes in the bottom.

The ballad of The Sad Cactus.

It’s funny ’cause it’s true. Via The Rumpus.

It’s that exciting time of year when I update the blog roll! Yay! I added some garden blogs, some gardens, and I also cleared out some dead links. So go ahead and click on the links to your right with abandon!

I’ll also link to some of their posts as we go in the weeks ahead.

And if I missed any blogs I should be linking to, including yours, let me know in comments, please, OK?

One of the Garden Rant writers is spying on her hyacinths. Why would she do that? I’d want to put the spycam on something you were less sure would actually bloom, just to see if they were blooming in the middle of the night when you weren’t looking. Any suggestions?