Purple Shamrock (Oxalis triangularis)

I am still trying to figure this one out.  I got the one below in June of 2013 on discount, advertised as office desk spring decor, which means it was probably nearing the end of its glory.  Nonetheless, I thought with my limited experience as a botany enthusiast, I could coax the plant to sustained life for another couple years.

Here it is arriving home from the nursery:

And here it is potted:

Lastly, here it is with its close neighbor, the wandering jew.  I love this mix of purple together!

Perhaps one of these days I will try this plant again.  As I recall, it needed a more regular watering cycle than I could remember to give it.  I believe it would droop as it dried out and that's when I would know I was behind in watering.  This happened way too many times to be healthy, probably.  Also, I remember reading somewhere that once it blooms it doesn't last much longer.  Or perhaps it is that it is tough to trick it into dormancy?  Anyway, this puppy died only months after I bought it.

Wandering Jew (Tradescantia zebrina)

This is by far the easiest houseplant I have ever owned.  It will grow in any lighting condition and almost any watering habit.  And, it is super easy to propagate.

Here is the "mother" zebrina about 5 months after I had received it as a gift.  It is already quite overgrown and is partially choking itself off.

Now, when I was first learning my botanical basics with this plant, I would propagate it something like this… Clip off a dozen or so tips, stash them in like 3 glasses and then plant them each 1"-2" apart in a new pot.  With two years of countless propagations (I have easily propagated this plant into at least 40 different pots), I have refined my technique to involve 10 times the clippings and almost no spacing between replants.  Observe:

Just a few clipping per glass!  What a novice!

The sparseness of the plantings led to sparseness in the adults.  When people refer to their plants as "leggy," this is what I picture:

Then I started with the idea of clustering the clippings in more dense configurations.  This example is probably 12 clippings twist-tied together and set in a juice glass.

I took the twist-tied cluster out of the water and set it in new soil a week or two later.  I don't think I even took the twist-tie off until it had doubled in size!

Now my current technique involves shoving 100 or so clippings into one girthy but stout vase.  These have been sitting a few weeks and probably have loads of roots going by now, so I am due to plant them this week.

Below is a cluster I had planted using the rooting technique above.  This looks to be only a couple weeks in the pot and already it is super dense!

For those at home wondering what constitutes a clipping suitable for propagation, below is an ideal clipping.  The goal is to retain 3-5 leaves and a decent length of stem to set in the water.  Roots will shoot out from the locations where you have removed leaves, so it is best to ensure that your stem has a couple inches to it.  You set this clipping in a glass of water, making sure no leaves are touching the water, and you will likely see roots by the next morning.  You should wait until there is some length to the roots before planting them in soil.  Often times the stem will not be perfectly straight like this one, which can make it difficult to determine an appropriate clipping point and the extent of leaf removal.

Palm

I bought this little guy about one year ago, April 2013.  He was a wee one indeed, only a few inches high.  He's made some great progress though and is now up to about 13" tall.

April 2013:

April 2014:

1.) Propagate:
2.) Water: 1-2 times per week.
3.) Light: Bright, filtered light.
4.) Fertilize: Use all-purpose.
5.) Soil:

According to the tag that came with this, it should grow to between 4' and 10' tall!  I'm hoping for something around 6'.

There hasn't been too much activity with this plant, it just sprouts new palms every couple weeks.  I think in the winter it doesn't really grow at all, but that's pretty typical.  I would offer that it definitely likes to be watered so 2 times a week is probably pretty accurate.

I haven't looked into propagating this one yet, but I think that may be a summer project.  Although when I was repotting it awhile ago I accidentally separated one stalk from the rest so I tried growing that on its own.  It didn't seem to do so well so I recently re-merged it with the larger cluster.

Here is the rogue stalk in April 2014 before I finally decided to remerge it with the general stalk clump (no new growth since it has been in this pot):

Coral Reef Aqua (Echeveria Hybrid)

I purchased this little guy back in June of 2013.  Below is a photo I took after transferring the wee one from his propagation pot to a new self-draining pot with extra soil.  I'll admit, I am still a bit of a newby when it comes to photographing these plants so this is not the best angle to appreciate its smallness.

The quick facts for this one are:

1.) Propagate: Suspend clippings or new blossoms over wet soil (keep it very wet).  After a week or two, roots will grow out from the clipping towards the damp soil.  When the roots have grown for a little while you can plant it entirely in the soil.
2.) Water: Allow soil to dry between thorough waterings.
3.) Light: Full sun.
4.) Fertilize: Not necessary.
5.) Soil:

After just 3 months, this plant seemed to double in size.  Here you can see a September 2013 photo where the leaves are now draping over the edge of the pot.

Now, the tag that came with the plant said that it would only grow 4" high and 8-10" wide.  I liked the idea of a short stout plant.  However, this puppy kept climbing as you can see in the photo below from January 2014.  At this point, the trunk had grown so high that it could no longer keep itself upright, I had to lean it against the cabinet to keep it vertical for the photo.

It was at this point that I decided something must be done to prune this bad boy.  I read that you can "behead" or "decapitate" the echeveria once a year (or something like that).  So I cut off the top portion of it and teetered above some moist soil to get new roots to grow.  I hadn't anticipated that the leaves would become less rigid, which caused the clipped trunk to plunge into the wet soil.  However, this didn't really seem to inhibit the rooting process, because it is now established in its own pot quite nicely.

I hadn't anticipated that the trunk would sprout all these new little rosettes, in spite of being beheaded.  Here's a photo from early April 2014 where you can see some well-along rosettes coming out of the main trunk.

I decided that in addition to re-establishing the "head" portion of the plant, that I should try some other propagating methods, like yanking off these new rosettes and hovering them over moist soil.  To experiment, I also ripped off some leaves and stuck them in wet soil too.  Initially I tried to keep the raw areas very close to but not quite touching the moist soil, but ultimately I got lazy and just let them sink in.  After a couple weeks, some of the leaves weren't really sprouting any kind of recognizable roots.  So I shoved them in further and tried extra hard to remember to keep the soil moist every day.  Here you can see I have potted each little propagation experiment in a small terra cotta pot over a basin of water, to help keep it moist and humid.

I think my patience with this paid off (this was a few weeks, longer than I had expected from what I'd read on the subject!).

I figured they had enough roots started to be given a more permanent home, so I potted the lot of them in this new self-draining pot with a mix of new and reused standard potting soil.

I cannibalized the remaining leaves and rosettes that again started to form on the original trunk.  They are now rooting in the 4 small terra cotta pots.  Hopefully in a week or so I will have photos to post of their new roots.

I'd like to create a potting arrangement with a sampling of all the different succulents I have.  I will try to follow up with that some time this summer.

One last photo.  This is the remains of the original plant which I decided I'd just throw into the compost pile.

EDIT

Here is a cross section of what it looks like to "suspend" your plant over the moist soil, at least using the strategy that I did.

Snake Plant

Bought this little baby for 25 cents at the flea market today. I have been looking for them around at the local nursery but somehow was unable to find one. I'm excited about taking a wee one like this and growing it into something substantial.

Here is my purchase right when it got home.

Here it is after I potted it in a more permanent container and set it on it's new home on a northern wall next to an eastern window.

I've yet to do any research about this one regarding care and maintenance.

EDIT:

Here are some tips I just gathered regarding this plant.

1.) Propagate: divide during repotting, new shoots emerge as spikes and can be taken and potted separately.

2.) Water: once a week, reduced to once every two weeks during winter

3.) Light: can thrive in low light conditions, but grows well in bright natural light.

4.) Fertilize: 10-10-10, or mild cactus fertilizer. Do not fertilize in winter.

5.) Soil: all-purpose succulent potting medium, or something low in peat.

Flooding and Pruning

Today I gave all my plants a nice big hearty flush of water.  I read recently that it is a good idea to flood the pots once a month to help the soil "detox" from chemical build-up.  This is accomplished by completely drenching the soil such that water overflows the pot's humidity tray, coming back to the pot an hour-ish later and doing the same thing.
I made my way around my indoor garden, "detoxing" the soils of some of my oldest plants using this flooding technique.  For the younger plants, I simply just watered the crap out of them.  When I had made my way to my largest Christmas Cactus, which is always last in line for watering, I decided that it was too large for my preference.  Also many of the segments were feeling and looking kind of limp.  So I decided to prune!

I read that you can remove as much as a third of the plant at a time when pruning. I don't think I came close to that, but I tried!  With these plants, all you have to do is twist off the leaves at their segmented connections and the cuttings come off in your hands. You can either compost the clippings or tuck them one-segment-deep into new potting soil to propagate.

A week or two ago, this plant had opened up some new blooms. I didn't realize when I got it that they do typically bloom twice a year.  Essentially they bloom around the time of year when the hours of darkness are most equal to the hours of lightness in a given 24-hour period.

Lastly I read that these plants prefer indirect light, so I removed it from its west-facing window sill to a plant stand adjacent to a north facing window in the same room.

Photos and more details about this plant and its care to come.