Good Grief! Another Succulent Post

Are y'all tired yet of hearing about my succulent babies? In my last post about them, I took you for a walk around my yard to show you the little garden area I've set up. I ended the post telling you we were expecting some cold weather to come in that would threaten the tender succulents.

After a couple days thinking about it and going back & forth with ideas of how to protect them, we ended up doing this...

Yep, we cleared it out. It took me nearly a week to move everything from the greenhouses out back to the garden area. It took Jamie and I less than 2 hours to pack it all away in to a trailer. Two small heaters were added to keep the temperature up.

We had considered throwing tarps over everything outside, but I just couldn't stand the thought of possibly losing more plants to the cold. Especially after my impatience had led me to move everything out two weeks earlier than our original planned May 1st date.

Speaking of losing plants to the cold, I showed you in an earlier post what happened when the last cold front moved through, and the greenhouse breaker tripped leaving my succulents completely in the cold for two nights. A couple days after that post, I decided to try something--a desperate measure to try to save some of the plants that were dying.

I beheaded or took leaves from everything that was cold damaged in the hopes I could save some by rooting new plants. They were dying slow deaths anyway, so I cut above the highest dying leaf. On plants that were already showing damage to the top, I took a leaf or two. I placed everything in trays of my soil mix and let them sit for a couple days to scab over the cut. Then I started misting daily to keep the soil damp. My research showed conflicting information on whether this would work or not, but what did I have to lose--again, they were dying anyway.

Here we are days later, and I'm thrilled to say I see new roots and new rosettes on some of the cuttings! I'm over the moon about it!

Fantastic start, but it won't be considered a success until I have plants large enough and with strong enough roots to be planted. Stay tuned--this is a project I imagine will take weeks.