Anne Jaeger
Here’s a plant you will never have to spray, prune, deadhead or tie up to support. If you ask me, it should be called the “neglect plant” but the 18th century botanist who discovered it decided to name it after himself, so its common name’s a little more difficult to remember; “Echeveria” (say: ek-eh-VER-ee-uh or esh-eh-VER-ee-uh.) This thing is like “Hen and Chicks” on steroids. A large rosette of juicy leaves that look ruffled on the edges. The colors are spectacular, really. Good thing we’ve got pictures because I’m at a loss as to how to explain it. Echeveria hybrids are a rich relative of the poor old much maligned “Hen and Chicks” you may have seen in older gardens of the past. “Hen and Chicks” have green rosettes of fleshy leaves with pointy tips that seem to hatch one after the other overnight. There’s been a renewed appreciation for them too recently. Everyone seems to be sweet on succulents these days.
The new hybrid eschevia’s are in the same family, but these relatives are very fancy. Burl Mostul of Rare Plant Research in Southeast Portland grows a couple thousand every year to sell to garden centers. Mostul admits he used to think of them as “junk plants” but now he hunts them in Mexico. There are a couple of aspects to echeveria’s that capture Mostul’s imagination now “the colors, I guess. And they look like succulent cabbages. They’re a very structural plant and nothing looks quite like them.” To Mostul the echeveria is one plant that is in the “picture is worth a thousand words” category. He says they remind him of a thick leafed winter kale.
If you are short on space with only a small terrace or patio in full sun, here’s your plant. There really isn’t an easier plant to grow. Those fleshy leaves hold a lot of water and developed that way as a survival strategy for long periods of drought in Mexico. Mostul says they grow fine in light shade but the “colors are so much more intense in full sun.” The wavy edges turn from pink to almost magenta with plenty of sun. Grow it in the soil it comes in or repot it with a fast draining cactus soil mix. Mostul takes it out of the pot and grows it right in his clay garden soil with everything else. The trick he says is “leaving the original soil around the rootball undisturbed” and the water will just drain right through it.
If there is one draw back to the echeveria hybrids it might be the fact that it has to come inside for the winter. It’s a gonner anywhere below 25 degrees. So, make it a houseplant before the first frost. “The secret is to keep it relatively dry and let it go dormant in the winter if you don’t have bright light” according to Mostul. You can keep it growing indoors with a grow light but allowing the succulent to remain cool and dry gives the plant a chance to hunker down for the winter without any care from you. If it gets too tall you can just cut off the rosette top with about 2” of stem still attached at the base according to Burl Mostul. Let the stem dry out and heal over for a couple of days then simply set it on top of some cactus mix. In three weeks that echeveria will be getting all sorts of “ooh’s and aaah’s” again.
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