BCSS - Forum

Hi

I have been a member for over a year now and have met a few of you at the Birmingham branch and also the show at the botanical gardens. This plant addiction started in August 2018 and I have a lot more pictures over on www.reddit.com/u/CentralSucculents if anyone would like a look.

I have also requested the subreddit of r/BCSS on Reddit as it doesn’t look used. I was going to pass it on to the society if my request was granted but I’m still waiting to see, I thought it might be a way for you guys to reach more people.

Kind regards

Paul

I really like those glass shelves in front of the window - did you get those custom made or do them yourself?

What an amazing collection. Are the displays all in one room or throughout the house?

And how high your electricity bill is?

My dad made the shelves for the windows, he got some glass custom made and then made the brackets himself, he’s a great dad. They slide out and have a bit of double sided tape to keep them from accidentally moving and triple the windowsill space in the south windows.

The plants are spread around the house, a few shelves on bookcases and in all the windows, I haven’t uploaded pictures of them all. I’m still decorating my house so the plants may be moving again once it’s done. I’d like to get some shelves made and get a bit of extra room. There are still some plants on the wish list

The electricity bill isn’t too bad thanks to the LEDs, there are 11 of those lights around the house and it says they are 10w each. Sometimes I won’t need any normal lights on so I suppose it saves using other lights a bit too.

Such an impressive collection for someone who only started collecting about 18 months ago! Including some very desirable variegated plants - the Pachyphytums alone must have been quite expensive ( and on my wish list, but I don't like the prices they fetch!) Well done, I hope they continue to flourish under your conditions. What soil mix do you use for potting, may I ask?

Thank you, yes I got a succulent addiction and then found BCSS members selling on eBay so then I had an eBay addiction too. It was an expensive discovery. I blame Jill and Stuart from PlantLifeCactus partly and Tony Irons and others.

The soil I use is just screened akadama, I found out about it when I was researching Haworthias and I liked it so I swapped nearly all of the other plants over to it. Everything apart from a few Lithops that I didn’t want to disturb and the astrophytums I added some limestone, although I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or necessary.

I’m not sure why some of the photos rotate when they are uploaded so I apologise if you hurt your neck

Well done on a very nice collection of plants. I no longer use J/inns in any of my plants and my plants are alot
better for it, i use just perlite and vermiculite mixed i startered off by using less and less j/inns until i am
j/inns free. It takes a huge leap of faith to start with but i am so glad i jumped.
Brianc.

Thank you, I haven’t tried vermiculite before so I don’t know what it’s like. I’m a bit reluctant to start repotting the plants because I’ve done it too much the last year and a bit. For my first plants I used John Innes No. 2 mixed with perlite. The plants were ok with it but I found I really don’t like perlite, the way it floats and blows around. It was also before I knew mealybugs existed and that they were the same colour. I then switched to using granite chips and John Innes but it didn’t dry out quick enough for me indoors and it seemed a bit heavy for the glass shelves. Then I tried using pure pumice with a fertiliser but the pumice wasn’t big enough so the drainage wasn’t good with that either. Finally I found out about akadama because I had started buying more Haworthias and switched everything to that. It is a bit expensive but I don’t have any big plants apart from one old Jade plant and it should last a while indoors before breaking down.

Awesome collection, appreciate you sharing