Joyce's Diary

July 2002

As you can imagine the month has been dominated by cacti. I gave talks at Devizes Gardening Club and BCSS Oxford Branch, both completely different talks, which took a fair amount of time to prepare. Between these, show planning, and getting plants ready for talks and show, my husband is feeling a bit neglected. Indeed my garden and my plants are all in need of a lot of attention. – water for a start.

It was interesting to see so many entries in the Gasteria section of the show. It is not a section that usually attracts a lot of attention. I have remarked that it has been a very good year for Gasterias. I have never seen so many flowers on my plants over such a long time as well. There must have been something in the weather that suited them – I wonder what? Any suggestions?

My seedlings continue to make steady progress. I managed to find time to ensure that they did not dry out. Most of the Lithops have now shed their first skins and are showing their true colours. Many are becoming overcrowded in the small seed pots so I will soon start to prick them out into seed trays. I will then leave them in these seed trays for a year or more before I transplant them into individual pots. This gives me a chance to see how they are going to develop. Growing from seed means that you can keep the plants that you find most interesting in any batch. I am becomingly increasingly fascinated by Lithops and can see a time when they occupy more than half my greenhouse space. Fortunately the individual plants don’t grow enormous and they do not demand very high winter temperatures. Some of my plants survived very well last winter in an unheated greenhouse.