I know very little about the details of growing the plant but in our desert it handles heat very well and it will appreciate good drainage. Our drainage is terrible and a major cause of it's demise.

Good Day ....

i love my ice plant! i started with one small $2 plant and it is in all those once-bare patches now. i snip off a runner from the mother plant and scratch up enuff dirt to stick the starter at least 1/2" into the ground and water every day or so with liquified seaweed for about a mo. then only water it once, maybe twice a month after that. it grows! i have the one that has a fuschia bloom, it doesnt get as leggy as the yellow while establishing. i have done this even during 100 temps and drought, tho i wouldnt recommend it. I have also done this with hispanicum, blue spruce, and mexicana sedums - they give better weed control quicker, will tolerate all the direct sun given them. in areas where the ice plant gets some tlc or shade in late afternoon and a little more moisture, it becomes very lush.
if i had to cover a large area quickly, i would locate a sedum hispanicum in a one gal container; cut it up into 1 1/2-2" sections; soak it all in a bucket 6-8 hrs in liquified seaweed mixed 12 oz (whatever the smaller size is - 'Maxcrop') in a five gal bucket; spread it around the area just like seeds, just before sundown; and spray it in, spray it every day for a week, every other day for a week and then once a week for the rest of the first growing season - you do not need to soak the ground, simply get the surface ground moist. in about one week you will start to see the sections growing hair (roots). the stuff is amazing! in late winter/early spring it will be covered in tiny star shaped blooms. white w/hispanicum and blue spruce, yellow w/mexicana. it will grow profusely with next to no care. if you fertilize at half strength (i use miracle gro) once a month as soon as it begins blooming til may and again sept-oct you will be greatly rewarded. it is my understanding that these sedums grow in rocky, dry mountainous areas. i gave an established containered hispanicum a hair cut in march, it produced about 2 lbs worth of sections, i used the method i described to you and tossed into a 3X10 raised bed for ground cover. i watered once a week thru may, 2X/mo since and today the bed is covered. incidentally, i gave the mexicana a haircut at the same time and clumped patches of it here and there amongst the hispanicum, i cant wait for the show in late feb/early mar! while this plant is a fast grower, i do not consider it to be invasive as it is very easy to trim or contain.
hope this helps some. happy gardening!

Jo

btw - dont waste that leftover seaweed - you can use it on any plant w/o harming it...tho, it will not hurt at that strength, i would go ahead and dilute to regular strength just to get your money's worth - or use at that 'heavy' strength for any other stressed plants - or use a garden sprayer and give that sedum an extra boost!

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Kodoz: I'd like to add a little to sjv78736's post. Ice Plant is very common as a groudcover here in southern california and I've found it to be so hardy as to be practically indestructable. What 'sjv' says is true, all you need to do is snip off a sprig and remove the leaves from a couple joints and plant it. Moderate water is all it requires to grow like mad.

Personally I didn't care much for the color and texture of the standard ice plant so we've replaced much of ours with a variety called Candy Apple. A quick search reveals the official name Aptenia cordifolia (see the link below). It's a much richer green with small red flowers and it's just as hardy. Good Luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Candy Apple (heartleaf) Iceplant.

oh, oh! raybccul! thank you so much for that link!!! i have been looking for the correct name for my ice plant! and it was here at GW all along. LOL. i, too, prefer this variety (and for the same reasons) to standard ice plant.
Jo

Candy Apple Ice Plant is listed as an invasive in CA. If you can keep it contained, I suppose it is OK, but it climbs into trees, over rocks, and through the crown of shrubs. I've been tearing it out and composting, or burying it with abandon and still have tons of the plant. It can be a weed.

Terran

I'd not recommend ice plant because there are better choices. In our most recent home, previous owners covered a large dry slope in "Candy Apple" ice plant with a row of oleanders at the top edge. Neighbors to the left have the same plants. Neighbors to the right have these same plants. These invasive non-natives have been removed from our yard and replaced with natives. Perhaps you could use low Coyote Bush groundcovers such as "Pigeon Point" instead of ice plant. Nectar of Coyote Bush is used by many of our native insects and butterflies. Ice plant, on the other hand, attracts snails.

We have a small iceplant on a front slope that when in bloom looks like a patchwork quilt. the problem...after blooming it looks dead...no green just dead looking sticks and dry flowers. Is it dead? If not am I supposed to do something??

We recently vacationed in San Francisco, and this beautiful plant was all over a hill by our hotel. I broke off a piece, put it in a ziplock with a washcloth and water, and checked it in my luggage. I put it in a glass of water at home, and it rooted! Just planted it 2 days ago, and didn't know what the name was. We had a friend over for dinner, and he immediately recognized it as iceplant, and said while living in California, he hated it! He said it took over, and was out of control! Go figure! lol! I think it's beautiful, and I'm keeping it in a pot indoors. I knew it had to be hardy to survive all I put it through!
Another thing I loved in California were the rosemary bushes that were EVERYWHERE! I love the smell of rosemary! I just planted some this past weekend to enjoy this summer, but that's all I'll get out of it here in Kentucky!

How about using native wild flowers for the area. They grow in the most inhospitable environs. Contact your state highway dept. for a list of plants they use for roadside reclamation.

I love these ice plants. I take cuttings so they work for me. I stay after all my plants, and all sedum spreads. It's a ground cover. it's just a multi colored ground cover. Its spreading habit is desired by some people who are looking to replace places in their lawn where other things can't grow, especially areas under trees where literally nothing grows. Except that. So it's an each to its own thing, like all else. Some people won't grow roses bc of the pest issues. Some can't live without them. It's all individual. That's what makes things interesting.