ELVeS Haunt: 2017

Saturday, December 9, 2017

Agave attenuata coring (well the beheading actually)

OK a while back (like last year sometime) I talked about head chopping an attenuata that I had purchased

Don't think I ever got around to showing pics ....

lets see if I can find them...

Nope no photos of the process (darn it)

Oh well, I DID do the head cut, it worked really well. Here's the head re-rooted now and growing strong.

I did the strip down the side of the plant where the variegation is whitest. Left the leaves on the other side of the base.

You can kind of see that here, as you can see lots of new babies forming

They actually had some nice ones from this lot

I've actually taken a second batch off since then, and they are coming along nicely.

Really pleased with some of the results.

Coring Agaves.... forget that! Let's try a HEADCHOP

So I'm still experimenting with propagation - I looked at coring/stripping leaves from attenuatas and got some great results. Then when I did my second one I was looking at it going "hmm what if I just head chop instead" attenuata's are like cockroaches, they will still be alive when everything else has passed on. Needless to say I got some gorgeous pups (will post an update of some of the pups I've produced by coring/beheading silver trims in another post)

Sooooo today I braved something I've been meaning to try for a while.

I'm lucky enough to own 2 Snow Glows, and at some stage I'd like to try and propagate one of them, but I would also like to save the growing tip. Given how rare they are, I thought bI'd be etter off NOT experimenting on one of those. I do however have a spare Blue Glow. This one isn't TC, it came from a friends garden up in Gin Gin (who will probably send me death glares when he sees what I have done to his Blue Glow!!!)

Any way this is the victim um plant

As you can see she's a tad overgrown, and I really need to move her up a pot size (or 3).

Anyway, um OFF With her head. Out with the chopping knife (good old bread knife)

Sob

OK not very clean, but there you go.... now to keep it out of water for a day or two

Head cut

and time to clean it up a bit and remove some leaves at the base.

Yep that's better!

She was a funny old blue glow anyway, kind of grew sideways (I console myself with this thought while I look at the mess I have just made of one of my favourite plants)

Might be kind and repot her while I am at it. She's going into shock anyway. Tra la la.....

Hmm have I done enough damage for the day do you think ?????

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Summer has arrived in Perth

You can tell when summer arrives... you start finding the red backs out and about.

This one I found in the middle of floor on the carpet.... actually blended in fairly well. It wasn't until I looked closer I went "hmm that doesn't look like a piece of yarn I have dropped"

Nope it wasn't.

Needless to say it was carefully place the camera way closer than I was comfortable (given it was just my phone) take a photo, and then squish this lady with my size 11 boots before anybody else noticed her (like the kids... oh that would have gone down SOOOOO well now wouldn't it).

Ah well, she's now got a new title "dead-back".

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Reticulating my agaves....

I was chatting on the Australian Agave Collectors Page on Facebook, and a couple of people PM'd me about how I water my agaves.

This is my SMALL growing plant collection.... so nothing that is going to get huge. I'm going through a series of Allergy desensitisation at the moment which is killing my ability to get out and do some gardening ( 3 weeks.... 2 more injections and hopefully I can move onto stage 2 of the desensitisation - so shots every 3 weeks instead of EVERY week)

In the meantime I needed a way to make sure my precious babies got watered. So this is what I came up with.

Along the actual pool fence is a piece of poly pipe. Each pot has a seperate 2L/h dripper in it. The retic is automatically set to go off twice a week. I have waterwise retic so each station runs for 30 minutes. So twice a week my plants have 1L of water dribbled into each pot. They probably only need half of that, but that's the slowest drip system I could find. If you are looking for it - I found them at Bunnings HERE.

Unfotunately there is a bit of overflow from the pots, so I had to come up with a way to use that.

The local primary school was clearing some old science tables - just had to make a small donation to school for these! the overflow from the pots drips onto the tables below. The plants at the back DO get dripped on, but the rest are bottom watered - which works well for most of those attenuata babies.