First, I want to apologize for disappearing briefly. Having missed a couple of days of posts due to a crazy work week which included some travel, I'm back and eager to talk about plants and the garden again. With temperatures expected to get into the 60's F for a few days later this week, I should actually have the motivation to get out into the yard to take some photos too.
But first, I finally decided to do something about the somewhat overgrown terrarium. Remember, I look at this every time I get on the treadmill, and it was really starting to bother me.
The only thing I saw as a problem was the Echeveria:
It had formed so many offsets, and two of them were blocking other plants significantly:
Plus they were just out of scale with everything else, and looking fairly ugly from certain angles:
I decided that the two big rosettes in the front needed to be removed, so I got out the pruners and snipped them off:
Although that certainly made more room for the other plants, it left a lot of dead foliage very visible:
So I just pulled it all off. Not having any experience with Echeverias, I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but I suspect it was as I usually see these in photos with bare stems.
The leaf is perfectly blocking it... Here it is from a lower angle:
I suspect that more offsets may form now, but we'll see.
The terrarium looks much better now:
I expect the small offsets to start growing, now that they will be getting more light.
Plus now I have a couple of big cuttings to root:
Those will make impressive specimens on the deck this summer. I wonder how big they will get?
So now I can enjoy my exercise, unmolested by this terrarium task.
Just for fun, this is what the terrarium looked like when first planted three years ago:
A bit of a change, right?
.
Alan, I don't think you can kill an echeveria, LOL. You did exactly what I would have done.
ReplyDeleteThose are hardy looking specimens! I love the "then" and "now" perspective on gardening. It happens so slowly that we sometimes forget where we started!
ReplyDeleteI think your pruning did make your terr look much better. Those big echiverias will look splendid on your patio. I think it takes several years for them to get impressively large. The largest one in my strawberry pot that I set out every summer is 7" across and it has taken it 3 years to get this big. What kind of grow light do you use in your terrarium?
ReplyDeleteLisa: these are just basic compact fluorescents -- probably "daylight" color temperature. I am looking forward to having these as potted plants this summer!
ReplyDelete