For the last couple of days we have been having plenty of rainfall and the plants in the garden look bright and happier for it. It's almost idyllic as the soil was desperate for a good, nitrogen-bringing rainfall, and the sunshine that we are getting inbetween is just the icing on the cake, so to speak. Of course, rain and sunshine are perfect conditions for other things to thrive, I believe, such as botrytis mould and I suspect that if I hadn't sprayed for greenfly that they would be a big problem right now. As mentioned in earlier posts, I have bought a selection of sempervivums to plant in a terracotta pot but before I can plant them I need to go to the garden centre and get a suitable medium for them to grow in. I have the horticultural grit that will be spread on top of the container, around the plants, but I need some kind of gritty soil for underneath. I was, originally, going to plant them in garden soil with stones at the bottom of the tub but I remembered something that happened over winter: I had run out of compost and had planted some lovely tulip bulbs in a container filled with ordinary garden soil. My soil is a clay type rather than sandy and the pot didn't have sufficient drainage so I ended up with a water-logged tub full of rotting tulip bulbs. You live and you learn, if you're lucky. Sempervivum 'Pekinese' needs the same growing conditions as
sempervivum 'Lilac Time' and
sempervivum 'Blood Tip'.
 |
| Sempervivum 'Pekinese' |
Above is the sempervivum 'Pekinese' that I bought. I suppose it is hard to tell from the images of the sempervivums but the ones I bought are about 4 inches in diameter. 'Pekinese' is very much like sempervivum 'Aarachnoideum' (spiders are arachnids) which is named so because the plant creates something that looks very much like a spiders web. 'Pekinese', as you can see, does this also to a lesser degree.
The label describes it as pale green with rosettes flushed pink in summer. I understand 'Pekinese' has pastel pink flowers in summer.
It doesn't show very clearly in the above image but if you look carefully you will see that there is a centre rosette (a circular arrangement of leaves, with all the leaves at a similar height) surrounded by a circle of baby 'rosettes' - this attribute is often referred to as 'hens and chicks'. The 'chicks can be easily detached and planted separately which is fortunate because I read that the 'hen' dies after flowering.
