Dollar Store Gardening Idea with Succulents

Toward the end of May, I went to a dollar store to buy some plastic liners for my planters. While I didn't find any liners, I found these cute guys (see the pictures below).

You're supposed to grow grass seeds out of the tops of their heads, but I removed the seed pods, filled up the bodies with dirt and planted small sempervivum succulents (hens and chicks).

 

I don't usually like head planters, but I think these guys look great. 

I water them using a spray bottle and spray streams (not mists) of water into the openings around the bottom of the plants. The bottom of the planters are porous, so I can also leave them in a tray of water for about an hour to soak the dirt. 

What cool items have you used as planters? What kind of succulents do you use? 

P.S. I tried to grow the grass seeds in a separate pot for my cat. They never sprouted. 

Succulent Flowers

My succulent collection is growing!

I recently was on the hunt for some new containers for the plants that I have in boring black and green planters, and got bummed out because it seemed as if all the containers cost more than I wanted to spend. Then I wandered into the picnic/summer area of the store. They had big square bowls and sets of four smaller square bowls for $3.99. They were 25 percent off, so I only spent around $8 for two big bowls and two sets of small bowls. Score!

When I got home, I used an awl to carefully punch drainage holes into the bottom of the bowls. The turquoise bowl in the picture below complements the buttercup yellow flowers that just bloomed on my new echeveria pulidonis.

Echeveria in bloom

Echeveria have small, adorable bell-shaped flowers.

Many succulent fanatics like to use a top dressing. Top dressing is decorative stones, marbles, gravel, tumbled glass, etc. that you put over the top layer of dirt so the arrangement looks pretty and to keep the succulent leaves from resting on potentially damp dirt. I think some white fish tank gravel may look nice in the arrangement pictured. 

Do you use a top dressing? What do you use?

Succulents in a Martini Glass

I always see cute succulent arrangements online and wanted to make one.

The best source of creative planters, in my opinion, is Goodwill. I found the giant martini glass pictured for about $4. 

No, the glass does not have a drainage hole. Instead, I lined the bottom with large pieces of a broken ceramic pot, which you can often get for free from garden centers. I then placed regular cactus soil over the broken pieces and planted the succulents.

To create the bubbly look:

1. Place clear marbles on top of the dirt, around the plants.
2. Sprinkle white sand over any exposed dirt.
3. Use a small, dry paint brush to remove any sand from the leaves of the plants.
4. Gently spray the marbles with water to remove the dust from the sand.

With this type of arrangement, I don't drench the plants with water. I use a pump-action spray bottle to water them. 

 

The arrangement has echeveria croma, small aloes, regular and variegated "string of buttons" crassulas, sedum capo blanco and sedum spirilum.

 

How to Care for Succulent Cuttings

About a month ago, I ordered 15 succulent cuttings online to increase my plant collection without spending a lot of money. When you receive succulent cuttings, you generally get baby plants without roots that the seller removed from a mother plant.

I didn't know what I was going to receive in the mail, nor did the plants come labeled. (Figuring out the names was part of the fun for me.) I am happy with the assortment that arrived carefully wrapped in newsprint.

So many succulents!

I punched some holes in the bottom of some salad trays from the grocery store using an awl, filled the trays with cactus soil, got the soil slightly damp with a spray bottle filled with water and inserted the plants. 

A nice assortment of crassulas, sedum and echeveria.

In the picture above, I removed the flower spike from the plant on the bottom left corner so more of the plant's energy went toward producing the roots than keeping the flower alive.

Kalanchoes and sedum.

 

Mist the cuttings with water and place them on a window sill. I mist my cuttings with water about every other day, when the soil was dry. 

Some of the little leaves that you see in the trays fell of the plants, but most are ones that I removed from the bottom of the stems so I could bury them in the dirt. The cool thing about the succulent leaves is that many grow baby plants with time, so don't throw them away. Instead, set them aside for a few days so the ends form a callous and then place the leaves on top of the dirt. In my USDA zone, 8A, it took about one month for the leaves to grow roots in late winter/early spring.

It will take at least two weeks for small roots to start forming. However, it takes some plants longer than other to root.  

Dinosaur Planter

My birthday was a couple weeks ago. As a gift, my husband made me a dinosaur planter.

He removed the top spikes and inserted three small planters. I filled the planters with dirt, hens-n-chicks and a succulent ground cover. This summer, the succulents will multiply and fill the planters.

String of Pearls, Aloe and Jade Plants

I have a handful of baby succulents thanks to my aunt and a lady at a garden store who didn't know what she was doing.

My aunt has some jade plants that turned into small trees. These little plants are from her.

Tiny jade in a tiny tea cup

Baby jade with a curly stem

My aunt also gave me this little aloe plant. She says that it will say small for a long time. So far, it has.

An aloe plant that stays small

My husband bought me a string of pearls plant (Senecio rowleyanus) at a garden store near our home. He says that the shop owner had the plant in the back. She told him that she hated it because she couldn't keep the others ones alive. She was watering them too much.

The plant started out as a single vine of round leaves, or pearls. The vine had some offshoots that I removed and replanted in the dirt of this hanging planter that I bought for $4.99 at Goodwill. I can't wait until the vines fill up the planter.

The plant is simple to propagate and I put some of the smaller vines that I removed from this plant in a "greenhouse" made of a clear plastic container with a lid. They're doing well so far.

String of pearls (Senecio rowleyanus)

 

What are you growing?

Growing Succulents

Succulents and sedum are some of my favorite types of plants to grow because they're among the only types of plants that I can grow. (I'm giving orchids a shot, but things look kind of iffy.)

The following are a few of the plants that I have in my collection.

Unknown aloe variety

Unknown haworthia or aloe variety

Roar!

Echeveria domingo

Delosperma lehmannii

Crassula "Tom Thumb"

The aloe, haworthia and crassula send out offsets on their own, so they're super easy to propagate. I'm currently trying to propagate the echeveria and Delosperma lehmannii with cuttings now that the weather is warmer.   

The white powder on the plants is diatomaceous earth that I use for pest prevention. 

If you know what the aloe echeveria-like varieties are, please let me know in the comments.  

Crafts, Outings, and a Mustache Cat

It about time I post some new pictures up of what I have been up to. I have not done so in a while because I did not feel like digging up the cord for the camera to connect it to my computer. However, just two days ago, I figured out that I can take the memory card of the camera and plug it into the computer. Duh! Here they are...











...a the Japanese Gardens





































































A snow cone on a Popsicle stick. Genius!














My succulents are growing like crazy. They survived this winter's snow storms outside. Yes, I left them outside; but I guess they liked that.















My lilacs finally in bloom after three years of waiting.




















My cat playing with a permanent marker






















A submarine we saw
























Scarves I made for the Special Olympics