twenty pound tabby: xeric

Monday, August 13, 2012

The New Crop of Hypertufa Pots

Since hypertufa pots work so well for hardy succulents such as sedum and sempervivum in my climate, I made more this year. Here are the ten pots I have cured so far this year and I have four more curing in water at the moment. I've settled on a favorite recipe of 1 part portland cement, 1 part spagnum peat and 2 parts vermiculite. I like the texture of vermiculite hypertufa over perlite and it seems to cure faster too. I'm switching over from using the bottled cement coloring from Home Depot to powdered coloring from a concrete supply place.
Here are some of them potted up with sempervivum. These poor plants had been waiting years to get out of their small plastic pots.

Sempervivum Glaucum Minor

Sempervivum Pacific Shadows

Sempervivum Grigg's Surprise

Sempervivum Dark Cloud are Larissa which are new this year

Here's some from last year. The pots and the plants came through the winter very well.
Sempervivum Sioux

Sempervivum Red Beauty and an unknown

Sempervivum Pacific Blue Ice

Sempervivum pumilum hepworth, Atroviolaceum and erythraeum

Sempervivum Cebanense

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

The Xeric Garden - Sedums

I have quite a few gardens in my Arvada, Colorado yard and way in the back of the yard is a small garden of sedums. This garden rarely gets any water other than what comes naturally from the sky, although I will occasionally bring a watering can of water back there if I think about it. That occurs once a month, maybe.
It's been interesting to see how different sedums grow in this garden compared to how they grow in the gardens that get regular water from the drip system. Here is Sedum Autumn Joy in a well watered garden compared to sedum Maestro out back. The well watered sedum is much lusher and has much larger flower heads. The leaves on the sedums out back are often a bit limp, especially after several weeks of no rain.

Autumn Joy