There is always joy to be found when you are focused on something you really love, and for me that comes into play when I am out and about in nature or working with my plants. And one thing that makes me exceptionally happy is adding new plants into my collection or even establishing plants from mother plants, whether by seed, cuttings or pups.
And although I have a reasonably large collection already, there always seems to be place for a few more...
Today I will be adding a few new plants to my succulent collection at my home nursery as I was recently gifted a few plants that I did not have in my new nursery since I re-established it after getting back to the farm. One being a lovely botched red leaved succulent that I am still trying to identify. At first I thought that it might be part of the kalenkoe family however I have not been able to find it under that search, I have also looked into the crasula flag, but nothing seems to fit it. I even tried an image search, but that didn't yield any helpful information either.
What I normally in a case like this, I would keep the plant isolated until I could thoroughly read up on it in order to ensure that there is no threat of it being an invasive species before I allow the plant to propagate, and although I am not quite sure about this one - I am hoping to find out soon, as this is really such a gorgeous specimen.
The second plant I am at least sure of, and this little velvet gem is from the kalenkoe family without a doubt, to be more specific this is a Kalanchoe tomentosa also known as the panda plant or the chocolate soldier. And although this is not such a uncommon plant and they are super easy to work with did not make me want it any less seeing that I didn't have one in my nursery up until now, so I was very happy to give this one a loving home.
And then of course there is my Gasterier pups that will be added to the collection soon. I planted these out a while back, they have established really well and soon I will be able to remove them from the small seedling trays currently housing them and re-pot them into individual pots. At this stage these little guys are watered with a sprayer every second day, as you can see there are some spider webs around the young plants, but for now I am leaving them there as the spiders are great at controlling other pests that might be harmful around the vulnerable young plants.
It warms my heart to see my plant nursery expanding - It might be slow going at first, especially seeing that this is done in-between the farm work and all the other things that my day revolves around - but given that, I would say that I am making steady progress, and I am hoping that it will roll into exponential growth soon...