What do we do when a mixed perennials pot is overgrown?

We tend to take it apart and start over.

Here we see Brian has pulled the plants out of the square pot and they have all come o0ut together in one well-rooted mass.

Nice!

Now we also see Brian has a knife. What is he going to do with that knife????

Here’s the closeup of the very well-rooted mass.

If you know how to crochet and just need some patterns for crocheting succulents, then this here is the find of the century.

Planet June is selling succulent patterns. So hurry up, get those patterns, and crochet yourself some christmas gifts ASAP! I wonder if you could use those as a tea cozy?

And don’t forget the crochet dinosaurs.

Cute! I know what I want you to crochet for me for christmas this year…

In San Francisco? Nobody told me! And we’re not hosting it? Unreal.

“Succulent” Terrarium / Utsuwa Floral Design
Utsuwa Floral Design
Friday, November 30, 2012 from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM (PST)
San Francisco, CA

Now that IS a quality terrarium. It turns out you don’t have to come to us at the Cactus Jungle for a quality terrarium. But tickets are limited.

Ever wonder how a cactus finds the sun? They rotate to face it. Really?

Every cactus knows exactly where the sun is. They know this from their first day of life, and will always reach for the light in their natural angle of repose. At the Huntington Botanical Garden, their massive old golden barrel cactus are so illustrative of this fact. Virtually every one of these large old specimens leans southward.

It’s true of our native cactus too. The compass barrel (Ferocactus cylindriacus) is so named because it always leans however slightly to the south. They do this so reliably that their inclination was once used for reckoning much the same way pioneers found north from moss that grows only on that side of a tree trunk.

OK, maybe not rotate exactly, but leaning isn’t as exciting a story as rotating.

UC Botanical Garden held a Succulent Wreath workshop and many wreaths were made.

Success!

(If you missed it and were looking for succulent wreaths, you know we have them.)

How did  I ever miss this?

It’s a Zombie Cactus! And it’s a pincushion! As handmade by SheWhoStamps.

These are amazing.

Here’s a closeup of just the potted cactus cupcakes part of the party.

Here’s the link to the whole party and a whole lot of photos.

I wonder if the terra cotta pots are edible?

Lila B Designs made terrariums for the Google campus.

I think they got the glass and plants and rocks and everything else from us. We had 3 people come in at 5pm a couple weeks ago and they were putting together terrariums for google, and that all looks like product we carry, so there is a good chance that we helped pick all these out.

I put the odds at 70-30.

They’re nice – even if they got their glass and succulents and other stuff from someone other than us. But I think they got it from us. So that’s even better.

70-30.

Keith sent me this photo of a Ferocactus pottsi and a carnivorous dinosaur and a fossil. He says this is the proper way to use a fossil in a cactus pot. Did he come up with this himself? Or did a customer ask him to repot this cactus along with adding the two toys?

I shall never know for sure. It is a mystery.

I wonder if that is a mammal fossil? It is a mystery.

September is traditionally the hottest month of our Bay Area year, so please watch and water appropriately. Also, if you’ve come back from your summer vacation and all your non-drought-tolerant plants have failed to thrive without water when you were gone, maybe now would be a good time to think about getting more of your favorite drought-tolerant plants. From us! At the Cactus Jungle!

September Gardening Tasks include:

• Water your Lithops. This is the time of year! Take a risk! Pour water right over their little stone-like heads. Remember, the rest of the year we mist them.
• Fall Veggies: Plant kale, spinach, cabbage, peas, arugula and lettuces of all colors.
• Christmas Cactus: Move them into a shady spot and start with a bloom food to get your Christmas blooms on time.
• Orchids: If you got blooming orchids in spring, now is a good time to start the bloom food to get a 2nd round of flowers this fall.
• Last chance for cuttings and divisions for summer growing succulents like Echeverias and Crassulas.
• September is the last month of the year that it is safe to transplant cactus, or to plant them in the ground. After this month we are close enough to winter and they won’t like it.
• Fruit Trees and berries, including blueberries and strawberries both: Now is the time to fertilize with a broad spectrum fertilizer. Citrus need a citrus food. Blueberries need a food for acid-loving plants. Strawberries want a standard fruit and flower food.
• If you don’t pull your weeds before fall, please make sure you dead-head the seed-heads before they spread their seed into weed season. Less seed now means less weeds later.

I have a new feature in our Monthly Email (You are on the monthly email list, aren’t you?). Monthly Gardening Tasks! Karen N. asked for it, and now you all get it. It’s for the Bay Area in particular; Northern California in general, and as far south as Southern California if you’re too lazy to look up your local gardening tips and tasks for spring. On the other hand, if you live in Minnesota or Albany, NY then you can take the task list with a grain of salt. Interestingly, we have a very similar climate to Rome, so if you live in Rome you can follow the list quite closely.

MAY

• If you’ve already fed your bamboo early for spring, you can feed them again now and get a real boost of growth for summer. If you haven’t yet, then what are you waiting for?
• I suspect you’ve already started your veggie gardens, since April is the top month for veggie gardening, but May brings a lot more varieties out so don’t forget to add more, spaced out through the next few months. Coming mid May – Melons! They don’t always work in the Bay Area because they need some heat, but we’re very hopeful this year. It’s warm enough to be planting Basil and the warmer climate Tomatoes. Corn! Beans, too.
• If you have any of the Ice Plant type succulents in your garden and they’ve had their first blooms already then you should go ahead and dead-head them – which means trimming off the spent blooms – so they can rebloom later in the summer. Alternatively they have edible fruit so you can let them ripen too, however you won’t get more blooms if you do. You’ll have to watch for the ripe fruit because if you don’t pick them in time you’ll lose them to the birds. And finally, if you get them in time then you can make jam. That’s all they’re good for.
• Olives! Now you really must fertilize your Olive trees, if you have fruiting Olive trees.
• It’s time to start in on bloom food for plants that will bloom in July and August, so I would definitely get right onto your terrestrial orchids like the Epidendrons and the Cymbidiums. Cactus are mostly summer bloomers if they haven’t already budded out for spring, so bloom food for them now too. Lewisias, Dudleyas, Penstemons, Mimuluses….
• As the cold nights turn warm, watch for caterpillars and aphids. Take care of them early.

On the other hand, the SF Chronicle also has a list of gardening tasks for May, and they tell you to:

– Weed.

– Continue to pursue slugs and snails.

That’s not as much fun.

Not only are these photogenic cupcakes made to look like Echeverias and Stapelias, but the website they come from, Pixel Whisk, has complete how-to, DIY, baking and decorating, do-it-yourself, frosting and molding, follow along instructions that you can follow along the instructions with to make your own by doing it yourself. (Was that last phrase too much? I think I went one phrase too long in the run-on clause bonanza. Maybe I should take it back and end it on “to make your own.”)

Awesome!

Thanks to Tony for the heads up.

A modern dresser (well, maybe it wasn’t so modern, but more like moderne, before the makeover) is transformed into a multi level apartment complex for succulent families.

On the Grizzly Bear Modern blog they also include lots of DIY instructions with lots of photos in case you wanted to do one of these yourself.

Rikki builds our custom succulent wall panels using a LOT of Sempervivums. And then I asked her to look up and took a 2nd picture.

You can see her face!

Life on the Balcony‘s Fern Richardson has a book out, Small Space Container Gardening. And judging from this video she really does have just a small space to garden. So small that she’s planting herbs underneath succulents. Interesting!

Where can you get the book? We carry it. Not that you have to come all the way down to our store on a rainy day to buy a book, but you could.

Cucumber Cactus Craft

We’re having some cowboy fun this week and pulled together a quick cactus craft after rounding up some cucumbers, toothpicks, and tissue paper.

Uh oh. That doesn’t sound promising.

Well, I guess this adorable kid can’t go wrong with a cucumber and a knife, so I won’t make any snarky comments. But you will have to click through to see the denouement of this craft experiment.

This is one I need to know. I can get a little gel out of the aloe leaf just by cutting the tip off and smearing the cut end all over me. Or at least smearing it on the burn or cut. But then what about the rest of the gel in the leaf – how do you harvest it? Since I plan on making my own moisturizer I need to learn these skills too.

Video after the break since I can’t get the auto-start to turn off. Read More…

Today seems to be all about the How-To’s, so here we have a unique and rather fascinating look into how to knit a cactus tea cozy.

wootwoot teaches us the rare and tender skills.

First you buy the yarn.

Yarn:  Araucania Nature Wool (100% wool, 240.59 yd/100 gr) : 40 and 08, 1 sk each,  Cascade 220 Quattro (100% wool, 220 yd/100g): 9436 1 sk, approx. 20 yds natural colored lace weight wool.

Then you make a copy of the stitch guide to keep alongside you while you’re knitting.

Stitch Guide:
• m1p: make 1 purl:
stitch by picking up the horizontal bar before next stitch and purling into the back of it.

• S1: Slip 1 stitch

• mb: make 2 stitch bobble:
kfb, turn, p2, turn, s1, k1, psso

• dd: double decrease:
Slip 2 stitches as if to k2tog, k1, pass slipped stitches over.

OK, now you’ve lost me. I don’t know what that is all about. I better stop right here. Here’s a picture of the final product.

Very cozy. If you want to know more, then click through the link already, for crying out loud. The rest of us are going to scroll past this post and get to the good stuff. Margaritas.

If you know how. Here’s some instructions, with a really nice illustration. Now you too know how to get to the meaty pulp of a spiny cactus pear.

How to peel a cactus pear.

Step 1: Holding the cactus pear with a fork, cut off each end.

Step 2: Make a long vertical slice down the side of the fruit. Cut deep enough to go through the thick skin but try not to cut into the fruit.

Step 3: Gently pry open the skin and it will peel away quite easily.

Step 4: Remove the fruit from the skin and discard the skin.

That looks really easy. Much easier than the technique I used last time I made prickly pear margaritas. They were delicious.

Apparently they measure out very small amounts of water for each cactus in Australia to save water.

Ross Comben, of Kirisit Nursery, shows that only a drop of water is needed to take care of his succulents. Photo: Peter Holt

We prefer to water less often, but with more water. Drench the cactus and let the water drain away, never sitting in water. We water cactus only every 2 to 4 weeks. That’s what we do. But then, we don’t live in Australia where the water drains from the bowl counterclockwise.

If it’s an Opuntiad, i.e. in the Opuntioideae subfamily of Cactaceae, i.e. generally in the genus of Opuntia, Cylindropuntia, or Austrocylindropuntia, plus a few other genuses like Consolea which look like Opuntias, and Quiabentia which are really cool, then you:

1. Wait for it to flower. Take a picture, it will last longer.

2. Check out this website Opuntiads Web.

3.Click one of these links to get to the flower pictures:

LINK: http://opuntiads.com/O/opuntiad-flowers/opuntiadflowers-1

LINK: http://opuntiads.com/O/opuntiad-flowers/flowers-3

LINK: http://opuntiads.com/O/opuntiad-flowers/opuntiad-flowers-4

LINK: http://opuntiads.com/O/opuntiad-flowers/opuntiad-flowers-5

LINK: http://opuntiads.com/O/opuntiad-flowers/opuntiadflowers-2

4. Match up the pictures and grab the ID.

5. Send me the photo and the proposed ID and I will be happy to concur.