Starting off Slow - Succulents, Aloes & Cactus's

When I me back to the farm I knew that the majority of my plants on this side had succumbed to the drought, and sadly I could bring very limited stock back with me from Durban, so the best I could do here was to start from scratch.

So when a small local shop contacted me to supply them with plants, my initial thoughts were that of knowing that plant stock takes long to establish - and seeing that I had very little plants on stock I wasn't sure if I would be able to help the client... But then I remembered that I had some plants up my sleeve so to speak.

Lucky for me, I had planted out quite a bit of aloe, succulents and cacti before throughout my stay on the farm, and those are all drought enduring plants, so I went to go check on them, and lucky for me there were a lot of them that had already made some decent sized suckers that was now ready for harvest.

I explained to the shop owner that I was still busy getting plants ready for sale but that I could supply her with a bit of these water wise plants, neatly potted in the mean time to sell as counter stock.

The owner was elated,in fact this was exactly the type of thing that she was looking for.

First I harvested a few of the young saplings from the Aloe mother plants and potted them out into colorful pots, they looked great, and and I thought to myself that they would be a good seller for the counter.

Then I moved on to the cacti - these were absolutely gorgeous, but in all honesty, a little less fun to work with, given their prickly nature.

For this I managed to gather quite a few balls off of the large Echinocactus grusonii plant - also known as the barrel cactus (Above) And I also got a fair amount of Mammillaria bucareliensis (below)

These are simply wonderful as indoor or outdoor plants, they are easy to maintain and care for and make great gifts for any plant-lovers.

As much as I love cacti - I will admit that my hands certainly does not love them as much as I do right now, at least not after planting a few of them out, and then shifting focus to getting the tiny hair thorns out of my fingertips.

I also came across a euphorbia triangularis verigata (below) in the garden that had recently made some new shoots, and decided to harvest and add some of these lovely succulents to the mix. I think they display quite well in the array of plants I had ready to go so far, so I added a few of them to the order.

I also managed to scrape together some spotted haworthia, which is gorgeous yet very low maintenance plant that would be ideal for counter stock.

And then I added a few Gasteria, these Native South African plants is always a winner when it comes to sales.

I was quite happy with the selection that I managed to put together, and I took the order out to the shop, the store owner was just as happy - my first order since I am back on the farm, it might be a small step - but its a step in the right direction