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Hi, I'm Cooper a.k.a. Heck (he/him). I'm a 21 year old artist from southern Ontario with a slowly expanding collection of plants, mostly succulents, and a passion for horticulture.

[morphons]

Display by Southfield Nurseries. RHS Malvern Spring Festival, May 2019.

[cactactus]

A last pretty picture of my echeveria (and friends) bowl before I take it inside for the season, and it gets leggy and loses all the pretty colors. Oh echeveria, never satisfied with the light level unless it's outdoor direct sun... or a grow light, which I'm not willing to buy them. No window can satisfy.

[cactactus]

Jar of java moss: the poor man's marimo.

[cactactus]

Threw together a little arrangement with Tulista pumila, Haworthia cymbiformis, Haworthia turgida, and a tiny mystery haworthia using a pot I’ve had forever, a broken chunk of terra cotta, and some crushed brick. It’ll look a lot better when the tiny baby haw grows and the cymbiformis pup takes on a nicer rosette shape now that it’s not being squished by the mother plant, hopefully.

[cactactus]

Holy moly, doing some repotting, and while I usually keep haworthia in clumps, I seperated my H. cymbiformis so it can start new. I have at least a dozen extra haworthia plants if you combine all my H. cymbiformis and H. turgida from when I seperated a big cluster last year. At least I’m down in number from when I had something like 20 of the turgida. I don’t have local plant friends I can give any to, but I don’t really want to be holding on to doubles of plants. I would give ‘em away on r/succulents, but I have never shipped plants, or anything else for that matter, and an hesitant to.

Maybe I should just tell my mom to use her Facebook (I ain’t touching that website) to post that if anyone in town wants a couple, they’re free.

[whateeveeer]

Feels like holding a really weirdly shaped rock honestly

[feral-crow]

it makes me so mad that people aren’t taught that you can just... clone plants.

[fuzzylizardman]

W h at

[feral-crow]

yeah!! it takes like, five minutes and costs nothing/next to nothing (depending on what plant it is). which is why im especially mad that literally no one talks about it except for like, exclusive gardening circles :/

each plant has different cloning techniques but here are the ones i remember;

basil/peppermint/tomato/most leafy greens with a stem; cut a piece off your main plant about the size of your hand. trim all the bottom leaves, cut stem diagonally, put in jar of water. when roots are about the size of the stem, plant in garden.

onion/garlic; the easiest. just leave whole onion or a garlic clove in a nice sunny area. eventually it will sprout. plant in garden.

pineapple; takes a long time. take spiky leafy part, trim off the bottom leaves, put in water about as deep as the leafless part. wait. a. long. time. (mine took two weeks to root.) when roots are big, plant in garden.

flowers, bushes, trees; get your hands on some rooting hormone (or willow tree branches). cut stems the same way as the leafy greens above, make sure to cut stems diagonally (greater chance of rooting.) dip in water, dip in rooting hormone, shake off excess, and place in water/dirt. these are pretty hard to get to root, especially if you don’t have rooting hormone. 

some plants won’t ever root because of gmos (some companies create sterile plants and when they’re cloned they just die off) but generally any plant you get at a garden store you can clone. 

[roguetatertot]

This is called propagation!!! And it’s awesome!!!

Water propagation comes with some caution tho! While it’s a great way to watch the roots grow and ensure it’s actually propagating, it can shock the plant to remove it from water and suddenly plant it in soil. Water contain no nutrients, so to go from surviving on no nutrients to an abundance of nutrients in soil can potentially shock the wee baby.

Also, unless the water is changed out every day or every other, the oxygen in the water gets used up. Make sure to replace the water often so there’s a constant supply of oxygen.

If you have a fish tank, that is an excellent place to propagate certain plants! The nutrients the fish leave in the water will help the plant thrive, and ensure less shock when transplanting in soil. Fish might nibble on the roots, but probably not enough to cause any issues. Pothos, philodendrons, and monstera adasonii (vining Swiss cheese) are good ones to propagate this way, as they like the humidity from the tank.

Soil propagation has its own downsides, such as not being able to see if the roots are growing, but you can give the cutting a gentle tug in a few weeks, and if it resists, it has roots!!

And with ANY propagation, there is basically a 50/50 chance it will take, no matter which method you use, no matter how careful and attentive you are to technique and care. So don’t be discouraged if your cutting never roots, or dies. Not all plants can be “cloned” either of these ways, as well. Some need grafting from another plant which fruits or flowers! Some can only grow from seeds. Some cuttings need to scab over before propagation.

So if there’s a plant you really love, just Google how to propagate, and then Google some more. And instead of trying to propagate just a single cutting, try a few at a time, just in case some fail.

Happy planting!!!!!

[rob-boss]

It’s true that it’s difficult to get trees/bushes to grow roots with this method, but there is a pretty cool technique to get around this! It’s called air layering and it won’t work for ALL trees but it does work for many.

What you do instead of cutting off an entire limb and hoping it will root is you select the portion of the tree you want to be your new tree, and at the bottom of it, scrape off all of the bark, at least an inch long. Then you need to put your root hormone around the top of the shaved portion on the space where the tree still has bark. After that you’ll need to pack the area you want the roots to grow with sphagnum moss and wrap it in a plastic bag to keep the moss in place.

Once you have roots growing (could take a couple weeks) you can remove the bag, and cut the limb at the dead barkless section. Now you’ve got a new tree that’s already producing sap and as thick as the limb you’ve chosen! WAY faster than waiting the YEARS it could take to grow a tree to that size from a seed or a sprout.

Planting the new tree in sphagnum moss is a good way to help it grow lots of new roots and make sure it stays healthy before transferring it to a different soil mix or into the ground.

You also want to make sure that you leave probably a couple inches between the part of the branch you shave the bark off of and the main trunk of the tree, because after you cut off the limb, the wood beneath it will die back a bit and you don’t want part of the trunk to start rotting.

[cactactus]

Semantics, but propagation actually refers to any way of reproducing plants, including by growing from seed! People have recently been using it online exclusively for taking cuttings and growing from leaves, but it's actually a pretty vague term that can be used for any method of producing plants.

[cactactus]

March vs June

You can really see the difference between how sunken in cacti are after winter dormancy, the first picture was immediately after it’s first watering of the year, and a couple months later when they’re fully plumped up.

[cactactus]

March 19 - June 6

Wow, they’re definitely going through a growth spurt. The middle one in particular has doubled in size.

[cactactus]

Here’s hoping these new leaves on my Albuca spiralis are actually corkscrewed this year, since they’re growing outdoors. Last year they came in straight even though it was in a south window that gets full sun nearly all day.

[cactactus]

The heavily neglected bowl o baby echeveria are doing great, they look far better than they did two weeks ago when I first put them out.

They’re doing it out of spite. I am trying to get rid of my echeveria, it frustrates me that they etiolate no matter what if just given window light, even the brightest of it. I’d rather focus on keeping succulents that actually make good houseplants, like haworthia. But, when they perk up so much in the summer, I can’t bring myself to discard them.

This is actually largely regrowth from the stumps of plants I hacked down when I got too annoyed at how stretched they were a few months ago, with a few leaf props tossed in.

[cactactus]

Someone talk me out of buying one. (If there’s even any left tomorrow, I have a feeling these calathea will sell very quick.)

[cactactus]

My hands are super itchy from glochids I was stabbed by while handing my mother a pot of mini cholla. Which I was handing her because I don’t like those cacti due to how evil and stabby they are. Plants have a sense of irony and can sense when you resent them.

[cactactus]

I suppose I should start hunting for a new mount for my staghorn fern, it’s first basal frond it’s grown while I’ve had it came to be maybe 3 times the size of the one it came with... so it’s outgrowing the little cork bark chunk I mounted it on more rapidly than expected. I had thought the basan fronds would slowly increase in size. I think once another sheild frond grows I’ll switch it.

My mother probably has some scrap wood I can use.

[cactactus]

Aaaand a week after putting them out for the season, I have to bring a bunch of plants back inside because it’s dropping to 4 tonight and 5 tomorrow night. I’m leaving the bulk of my succulents out, they *should* be able to handle it. I just brought in my mexican pinguiculas, my staghorn fern (which technically should be able to take that temp, but given it’s not had long to acclimate to outside it seems too risky for my tastes), several other misc things, and all my cacti because I’m feeling too lazy to research which are north american deserts and will handly it fine as they’re exposed to cold night temps in the wild, and which are from more consistantly warm areas of south america and will suffer.

I have some rhipsalis growing in several of the pots with an arrangement of different plants in them, which I hope will be alright, but I’m concerned for. I think I’m going to leave it, though, as even if they bite the dust I have a lot of rhipsalis I can replace it with if need be.

[cactactus]

I dare you to show me a more root bound plant.

[cactactus]

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