This weekend, I made a project of refreshing my container garden on the back porch. My annuals had either started to die or just looked kind of bad, except for a couple here and there. I combined those remaining petunias and snap dragons into one pot (the one kind of in the middle, wide and gray looking) and replaced the hanging baskets with succulents.
I have two succulents from before, an aloe and another that I’ve no idea the species, but they’re both doing really well on the back porch and I figured more couldn’t hurt. They’re good when I forget to water them (which happens… I look out at the porch a lot but don’t GO out there every day), and they’re pretty cheap to buy. I got ten different kinds of tiny baby succulents. The kind of silvery one on the far right in this photo is called “Panda plant!” A lot of them have fun names, actually. From left to right in the front I have a “Powder puff” pchyveria, a golden sedum, and the panda plant. In the back is a crassula variety (non-specified) and a rainbow elephant bush. So fun!
I tried to choose plants that were different but complementary colors, and that had a variety of shapes to them to make the container interesting. This one has five different types. The one in the front of the shot is an echeveria “topsy turvy,” then a gibbaeum heathii and a purple scallops plant behind it, then a California sunset graptosedum, and the one in the back is a variety of jade plant called, I’m not kidding, Gollum. It was cool looking AND named for a Lord of the Rings character. Awesome!
The rest of the plants are mostly okay. My daisy has bloomed again, though it looks like it’s getting ready to go dormant for winter after this. The lavender didn’t survive at all, and I replaced it with a burgundy mum. The tree fern developed a weird yellow fungus type thing in its roots, so it died and I replaced it with a big succulent called a jelly bean (or pork and beans… but I like jelly bean better!) plant that I forgot to photograph. Anyway, the garden looks much happier now and I hope most of the succulents survive.
Joanna Volavka 