Pagan,
Your plant is going to be wonderful. It is amazing to see how they are using very small scions for grafting. Probably gives them much more scion stock from there pruned branches. Supposed to be very good.
It is amazing how soon those shelves you speak of will no longer be there as the plant grows.
Rick

I see your acquiring more and more like me. Has your Rik Ni Ran bloomed yet? I'd love to see a pic of her.

Kirk

Rick, I am so glad you told me that, since I did not have a clue it was possible for such blatant graft points to eventually look less stark over time.

I did get two more plants, Kirk, I am trying to limit my acquisitions to the number that I can sensibly take care of---I have a bazillion seedlings as it is!

Ms. Rik has not bloomed yet, I know yours has! But here she is today with the most number of leaves as I have ever seen her with, as well as some new branch nodes. As soon as night temperatures hit 20C here, I can almost hear new leaves being ejected by the plants!

Rik Ni Ran
{{gwi:348135}}

And this one is also new--it arrived with about 7 flower buds which, of course, dropped one by one except one that grew to over 2 inches before the resident monster knocked it off with one bat of his paw.

And finally, the sturdiest of my 4-month old seedlings. It struggled a bit after being moved to gritty mix (what an adventure that was). It was doing better until I bulldozed it with the garden hose this morning. We'll see what happens.

{{gwi:348139}}

Flowers will be nice but all in all, I am just glad I got leaves! lol

Pagan

Pagan, you plants are looking great.
Very healthy also.
Please keep the picture coming.
Marie

Looks like you're doing a great job. Ms. Rik looks awesome too. Seedling looks cute and I'm sure the abuse will make it that much better.

Kirk

Thanks, guys. I also have seedlings that are not doing well after repotting---three of them have no leaves at all and have been bare stumps for about two months now. I figured they will get the whole summer to get things done and if not, they will be culled for the winter.

Then when I got home yesterday, I decided to prune one of the adults. Probably not a good idea since it started raining but aside from looking unkempt, the plant is healthy so I am optimistic it will be fine as long as I kept it out of the rain for a bit.

Thanks, everyone, for the wealth of experience you have generously shared here.

Pagan,
Your plants look very well kept and healthy. I have to comment on the pot you have the recently pruned adult Adenium in. It is so beautiful. It looks like a hyper tufa, painted gold?
All very beautiful,
Rick

Pagan, your rocks are great really offset you plants and pots. May I ask where you get them? Thank you, Paula

Yes Rick, the pot is made of hypertufa. It's gold because it was the only acrylic paint tube I had, leftover from some school project ages ago. The color always makes me wince but I am glad you like it!

Paula, the pinkish things on the last picture was being sold as coarse sand at Lowe's. I bought it mainly for my precious haworthias (I have 7). The stones are also from Lowe's, sold as river stones. The rest is just gravel.

I only just learned to appreciate the actual function of top-dressing when I started using gritty mix---the medium is so airy, it actually needs something to keep the moisture from evaporating too fast. I think this rapid evaporation is what nearly killed my seedlings when I moved them into gritty mix. Well, that and impatience---I probably should have waited a few more months lol

Pagan

Pagan,

Your trials are a bit comical. I am just now getting leaves on the adeniums I have outdoors or in my greenhouse also. I have been knocking off my blooms when I water too and I am getting very frustrated. One would think they would be strong enough to hold on to blooms and not fall off just before they open while I am watering.

Your plants do like very nice and healthy. In fact your 4 month old has a much bigger caudex than my seedlings which I planted in March and April. So very nice job on the lovely looking seedling.

Good luck with your plants.

Hi Ladylotus,

Oh don't even get me started on flowers lol All my plants seem to have chronic bud syndrome. But since I moved them outside, all 5 of them have stopped threatening to bloom and just went crazy with leafing out.

P