Episode 117: Euphorbias and other succulents with Bob Potter
A selection of treasures from Bob Potter’s glasshouse. Photograph: jane Perrone
Transcript
Episode 117
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Jane: Hello and welcome to On The Ledge podcast bringing you botany to your bedroom and cacti to your kitchen since 2017. I'm Jane Perrone your host, yes this is how I sound, this is not just how I answer the phone. I am bringing you this week an episode on the wonderful world of succulents that come from South Africa and Madagascar. To find out why you need to be a little bit careful with that Euphorbia eap, why caudiciform plants look different in the wild and why growing your succulents in pumice may be the answer to all those over watering issues. We visit the greenhouse of Bob Potter, treasurer of the International Euphorbia Society and a very, very fine succulent collector. I'll also be answering a listener question about how to make a climbing plant make friends with a moss pole and we'll also be airing the second of our Meet The Listener interviews with lovely listener, Bobby.
Thanks to my new Patreon subscribers this week, that's Coach, Sal, Elizabeth and Bronwyn, it is truly wonderful to add you to the Patreon clan of people who support the show financially every month and those people are very valuable because they make this show happen. Without them, I could not make On The Ledge, so a big shout out to all my Patreons this week, it's "Thank You, Patreons week" on Patreon, so I should emphasise how much I owe you guys, you really make the show possible, so well done, give yourself a pat on the back on the back, go and make yourself an extra nice cup of tea and bask in the glory of being a jolly nice person.
Thank you also to MeerkatJungle who left a lovely five-star review for On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts. Your review made me laugh, MeerkatJungle, because you were apparently planning to turn yourself into the authorities for crimes against plants and then you found On The Ledge and it apparently has been your salvation. You also praise my show notes which I'm very grateful about because I do put a lot of work into the show notes, so thank you for pointing that out in your review. If you want to leave a review for On The Ledge I would be ecstatic for you to do so. Every time I see a new review it gives me a little bit of a shot in the arm and helps me get through those long editing sessions and it also helps other people find the show. So thank you to all of you who've left reviews in the past and if this is spurring you on to think about leaving a review then good, I'm glad to hear it.
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Jane: I first met Bob Potter at Cactus World Live which you will remember took place in the late-summer and I did a live show from there. It was great fun, and Bob was manning the stall of the International Euphorbia Society as well as selling some plants. So I bought a couple of plants off him and invited myself to his greenhouse, as one does when one is the host of a houseplant podcast! Bob founded and ran the nursery Toobees Exotics for 35 years before retiring from the trade in 2016, but he still very much has an interest in these plants and he's the treasurer of the International Euphorbia Society and has a very impressive greenhouse full of succulents behind his home in Woking, Surrey, which is a few miles south-west of London, if your British geography is a little bit sketchy. I visited a couple of weeks ago and Bob was so kind to give me a wonderful tour of his plants, talk about his obsession with the succulents and yes he did give me a few plants. I love my job, I'm so lucky! So, as I always say, do check out the show notes at JanePerrone.com as you listen, for pictures and details of the plants we're talking about. You can also find details there about the International Euphorbia Society because Euphorbias are so popular now, and many of the things that we call cacti are actually Euphorbias, so it's definitely a genus of plants that is on the up and I felt really lucky to spend an hour or so pottering with Bob Potter in his greenhouse.
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Jane: Thank you very much for letting me have a look around.
Bob: A pleasure.
Jane: This is a wonderland of spiny-ness, what does your collection focus on?
Bob: Well, most of the collection is based on succulent plants. Most people will be familiar with the terms cacti and succulents. There are a few cactus plants here, but the majority of plants that I grow are succulents. I suppose, specifically, it comprises a lot of South African and Madagascan plant material and Madagascan plant material has been one of my passions for many years now, so I'm very much into those sorts of plants.
Jane: What is it about the Madagascan climate that makes it produce plants like we see in front of us. We've got lots of caudiciforms, spiny-ness, I've never considered what the climate or ecosystem is like in Madagascar.
Bob: You've got to realise Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world, it's over 1,000 miles long, so there is a climate difference between the North and the South and from East to the West even, in terms of rainfall and stuff like that. Generally speaking, you've got to consider the place to be quite warm due to its location, so in terms of keeping plants from Madagascar I always tend to keep them on the warmer side. I suppose the absolute minimum temperature that I would really want to take my Madagascan stuff down to is 10C but, in this greenhouse that we're sitting in at the moment, we're keeping about 16C/17C and I think that's probably a better way of actually keeping these plants alive over a winter period because that is generally, for us, the worst time of the year to keep these plants going.
Jane: How did you get into this particular branch of the cacti and succulent world?
Bob: It started for me at a very, very early age. We lived with my grandfather when my mother and father were married and they had to live with my grandfather and grandmother because they couldn't afford a house at the time. I was brought up with my grandfather, who was one of these great amateur gardeners, and he had a small greenhouse in his garden and he grew all sorts of stuff in the greenhouse, but he did have a few cactus plants in there. I remember, and I've got pictures from a very early age, I'm virtually standing in nappies helping him in his greenhouse with his plants. He then produced a Chamaecereus silvestrii, peanut cactus as it's commonly known. You don't actually see a great deal of them these days.
Jane: You don't! That's very true, what happened to... it used to be one of the most common as a kid. Where have they all gone?
Bob: It's strange isn't it? This thing used to flower so prolifically every year and they used to go and stick it in front of the fire in the living room and make all these flowers open. I was, obviously, really taken with this at a very young age and I was so taken with the cactus plants, he made me guardian of the cactus plants at an early age. So you could probably say from about three or four years old, being brought up with cactus plants, and then it was natural progression from there to cactus, succulent and then a drop in the cactus to a degree and then concentrating on the succulent plants.
Jane: You've got a wonderful collection here, there's lots of things that are drawing my eye. Let's have a look at some of these caudiciform plants first of all, because I know lots of listeners are really into some of these caudiciforms, there's some big ones here. What's your favourite of these caudex we see?
Bob: I do quite like, for example, this bulbous thing here, this is a Madagascan plant, that's a Xerosicyos pubescens so you get this almost rounded ball shaped plant. It does tend to vine quite a bit and it can get a little bit out of hand, so I tend to trim the vines down.
Jane: It's huge, not quite a flattened football, the size of it?
Bob: Yes, similarly that's from Madagascar that one, you get a similar looking thing like the Fockea edulis from South Africa. What you've got to consider is, in their natural habitat, most of this plant is buried underground, you don't actually see this caudiciform plant or the caudex as such, it's usually underground. As hobbyists or growers of these sort of plants, we tend to raise this material above ground to enhance it a bit, if you like. If you look at some of the smaller stuff, for example, if you come across over here, where I've got some smaller plants buried out, things like Pachypodium brevicaule they can get quite large in habitat but they're very slow-growing here, or tend to be, from seed. Some of the smaller caudiciforms I do bury right up to their neck which is more akin to the way they live in their natural environment.
Jane: It's lovely the way you've got these bedded out here because oftentimes we don't see how plants would look in the wild, we see them in pots, but it's lovely to see things displayed as you might see them in the wild. I know you pot everything into pumice, is that right? Can you tell me a bit about pumice and why that is good to use?
Bob: I think this always a bone of contention amongst hobbyists.
Jane: It's controversial, isn't it?
Bob: People often say: "What do you grow your plants in?" I think it's horses for courses in a lot of instances for people because it would probably be fair to say that, over the years, I've tried every combination there is. I've used peat-based compost, I've used John Innes-style compost, I've used grit, gravel, you name it, anything I've mixed in with compost to try and get the free draining aspect that most people tend to say that you would need with these sorts of plants. Then, recently, I've just potted everything that I grow into this pumice material. It has, from my point of view, several advantages, it is free draining, when you water it any excess water will run completely out of the bottom of the pot or drain through into the bottom of the bed. You can actually see, when it dries out as well, quite easily, it will turn a darker colour when it's wetter and it will come back lighter when it's a little drier. So you can, from my point of view, actually control the moisture content of your potting material a little bit better.
The other thing, I think, is it tends to promote quite a better root growth system. If you ever want to repot plant material, as well, if you want to tip it out of a pot of pumice you can just knock it out, shake the pumice away, then you've not got a cake of material that you sometimes get with peat-based composts and things like that. I've gone over to that completely now. I think a lot of the hobbyists in the cactus and succulent world are going over to it as well because I've sold quite a bit of this stuff to many members of the society over the years and I think it's becoming more and more popular.
Jane: That's interesting. In terms of feeding, does that affect the feeding in that there's no nutrients naturally in the pumice?
Bob: Yes, that is one of the drawbacks, if you like, that you do have to feed a lot more than you would under normal circumstances. I suppose, again, it depends on your conditions in the glasshouse because, this is another thing, people say: "How often do you water your plants?" I can't tell you, you've got to see what happens in your own greenhouse because the greenhouse that we're standing in here at the moment, although it's the same size as another glasshouse that I have, the other glasshouse is a lot higher and you would be quite surprised how different the climatic condition is between the two greenhouses. So, there's no hard and fast rules. I would probably feed every second watering, maybe not in full strength of whatever feed you're going to be using, but maybe half-strength feed, I use half-strength feed every two waters.
Jane: It's great to see this collection and see the plants in their situation as opposed to in a pot. Although, I do love the pots too, and on the other side you've got this wonderful display, more caudiciforms, more interesting spiny things. Tell me about some of your favourites from this side?
Bob: There are quite a few potted plants here as well. If I look along this line here, we are actually in a difficult time of the year, well, not a difficult time of the year, but the time of the year when most of these plants are wanting to go dormant, so there's going to be a lot of leaf dropping off these plants so they never look their best in the middle of November. One that has still retained quite a bit of its leaf is this one, for example, Euphorbia aureoviridiflora from way up in the top end of Madagascar. It just looks like a miniature tree, so, to me, it's a fascinating-looking plant, full of leaf as you can see at the moment, they will drop off eventually. Some of the other plants, if you go along a bit further here, you've got a Pachypodium densiflorum out of Madagascar. It's just got this lovely fat body with these protruding arms coming off, again, you can see the leaves are starting to drop, perfectly natural at this time of the year when they go into their dormancy.
Jane: The Euphorbias are becoming more and more popular in the cacti and the succulent world, I suppose Euphorbia milii is, going back to my past, was extremely popular at one point, wasn't it?
Bob: It still is really, it still is as a house plant. Euphorbia milii have been hybridised to death over the years by the Dutch.
Jane: They have been, I was looking into that at one point because somebody was asking me for an idea on something. I said: "I can't tell you any more because there's so many different hybrids of this plant." Why was that the case, is it because it's easy to hybridise?
Bob: Yes, I think there's that point, it's very free-flowering of course. If you go back to, for example, Euphorbia splendens which is the crown of thorns which everybody knows about. Again, that's a plant that you don't actually see in its entirety very much at this time. But the millii types, they've been very much hybridised and they were hybridised, the Dutch or the Danes in actual fact, will hybridise them with all sorts of larger flowered Euphorbias. You could often see them in garden centres, millii bushy type plants with much, much, larger flowers, very popular, they've got all sorts of colours on them as well now. It was a natural thing, the millii types grow well, very well-suited to the house plant culture.
Jane: I don't have any of those at the moment, I've had them in the past and they've been wonderful house plants and lots of colour, so I can see why they're popular. But I can also see the attraction of these slightly more, shall we say, exclusive euphorbias, some of these must be quite old because they're enormous, have these been in your collection for a long time?
Bob: Yes, they have. The fascination, for me, Euphorbiaceae is probably one of the largest plant families, but if you take Euphorbia species generally you can get plants from very tiny geophytics, underground tubers, very small tubers, maybe 5cm, 2cm, 3cm even in diameter and then you're going up to large trees up to ten metres high. There's such a range of growth modes amongst Euphorbiaceae and that's, for me, one of the fascinations. I love the small geophytic types, turning round looking into the bed we've got here now, there's lots of them, very small caudex basically, most of it buried under ground as you can see. We haven't got anything monstrous in this greenhouse, but you're talking about Euphorbias getting up to bushy shrubby types, up to maybe three, four, five feet high.
You look in the bed,, at the back you've got some lovely Euphorbias up there which are more Columnar types, this lovely Monadenium, for example, I know it's not a Euphorbia species, they do include it in euphorbia these days, which, for me, frankly, I don't go along with it, however that's another story. They'll always be Monadeniums to me. This is a beautiful Monadenium spinescens from Tanzania, it's just looking a fantastic shrub. The Euphorbia venenificanext door to it, that's a West African plant, they tend to be a little bit more difficult to grow the West African stuff, but that's looking quite nice. You get a mode of growth like this, almost getting into tree-like proportions, and comparing it to very tiny, underground tubers.
Jane: Tell me about this thing in this planted corner bed here, with the giant leaves, because that is quite something.
Bob: Cyphostemma juttae, they do get quite big, some of the leaves. This one is planted out and it's amazing how well these things do when they're planted out. If you just turn around and look at one in a pot, it's not an unsubstantial plant but it's being restricted and that one over in the bed was probably put in a year ago at that sort of size, so you can see the difference in the leaf growth that it's made by being in a bed.
Jane: Those grey/green leaves, they're not rhubarb shape, but they're at least rhubarb sized aren't they? They're very impressive.
Bob: Yes, they are.
Jane: Will those drop off eventually?
Bob: Yes, they will, you can see it's already happening on the potted one without a doubt, they're ready to come away. Yes, they will come off and then they'll start up again next year.
Jane: We'll be back to the succulents soon. But now, we go from Bob to Bobby, for our second Meet The Listener slot. Take it away, Bobby.
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Bobby: Hi everyone, I'm Bobby from London. My passion for house plants started in about 2000 with aquascaping and aquatic planting. Over the years that's increased to include lots of different groups of house plants, in particular aroids and begonias. So much so, that I started the UK Facebook group, Aroid Adoration, which helps UK aroid lovers share information, make connections and even swap and sell plants.
Jane: Question one - There's a fire and all your plants are about to burn, which one do you grab as you escape?
Bobby: Jane, that's such a mean question. I think I have over 100 house plants, some of them have been quite difficult to find because they're quite rare. Others have resulted in really good friendships over the years. Each one of them has their own little story to tell. I think I would perish in my own indecision.
Jane: Question two - What is your favourite episode of On The Ledge?
Bobby: Am I allowed to pick two? They both happen to be double episodes, the first one is the visit to James Wong's flat. To me, he's such an influence and he's really inspiring, particularly his work with aquatic planting and terrestrial house plants. I love the way that he merges the two together and creates a beautiful aesthetic. The second one is the conversation with Peter D'Amato and carnivorous plants. I love carnivorous plants. I've got a few myself and it's so interesting to learn about their evolution and how difficult they can be to care for, so I particularly loved listening to those two episodes.
Jane: Strictly speaking, Bobby, that's actually four episodes but seeing as it's you, I'll let it go. Question three - Which Latin name do you say to impress people?
Bobby: I'm going to preface this by saying that if you're into aroids and begonias, they're such diverse groups of plants with so many species that some of them don't have common names at all, so you have to use scientific names. The ones I would say would be Philodendron warszewiczii Flavum Aureum. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that correctly or Begonia darthvaderiana - purely because it's named after Darth Vader.
Jane: Question four - Crassulacean acid metabolism or guttation?
Bobby: That's an easy one, since I'm really into my aroids, it has to be guttation. I remember getting my first Colocasiaand coming down in the morning and discovering little pools of water and thinking: "What the hell is this?" After a little bit of research online, I discovered it was when the plant exudes water from the end of its leaves and thinking: "Wow, that's really cool," but not if you've got carpets.
Jane: Question five - Would you rather spend £200 on a variegated Monstera or £200 on 20 interesting cacti.
Bobby: You could probably guess I would probably pick the variegated Monstera over the 20 cacti. Not that I don't love and respect cacti and succulents but I'm also guilty, as I have a variegated Monstera, so I would always spend that £200 on a variegated aroid.
Jane: Thanks to Bobby for taking part in Meet The Listener, if you fancy hearing your voice on On The Ledge, then do drop me a line to
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Jane: What are the health and safety with Euphorbias? Obviously we've got the sap, and also the spines. Obviously it's fairly straightforward, isn't it? Don't get yourself covered in the sap, don't get yourself spiked. Is there anything more to it than that?
Bob: They do all have a milky sap which is generally deemed to be fairly toxic, so the answer is if you've got any cuts on your fingers or whatever and you're messing about with Euphorbias or de-leafing or anything like that, don't get the sap into a cut because it does tend to irritate and sting.
Jane: Have you been there with that?
Bob: I have. I think everybody who has touched them has been there with that, particularly in the eyes. Don't rub the eyes because then that can sting quite a lot. One other thing to bear in mind, some of the columnar Euphorbias have got quite strong pressure in the capillaries and if you take a cutting you can almost get a mist off the plant and you won't see it. I did that once, I took a cutting off the East African Euphorbia, I chopped its head off, without even knowing it, for days afterwards I had this very strong stinging sensation in the eyes, so it was definitely that misting from the plant. Some of them are really toxic, Euphorbia abdelkuri from Socotra, is a particularly nasty one but generally speaking they're not life-threatening, they're just irritating.
Jane: You just need to know what not to do.
Bob: You have to be a bit careful particularly if you've got children around.
Jane: One other plant that was catching my eye was this super spiny specimen here, is that a Euphorbia, or is that something else?
Bob: No, that's an Alluaudia. That's also from Madagascar - it's Alluaudia humbertii. It's a shrubby species, most of the Madagascan Alluaudia tend to be very columnar, very upright, and in fact this is a Alluaudia montagnacii so you can see their upright stems. This is only a baby compared to the size they get in Madagascar, but the humbertii remains bushy, as such. But, yes, it is quite substantial spination on there.
Jane: I can imagine that's seeing off a few creatures that might want a nibble. I can see the point, yes. That's amazing. I wanted to ask you about some of these mess of spaghetti-type plants that you've got over here. Is this a Euphorbia, or is this something completely different?
Bob: No, that's a Syrigia - very unusual plant. Again, it's a Madagascan plant, it's one of these.
Jane: Is there a caudex under there?
Bob: It's a thickened root really, it's not such a fat thing, it does have a normal root system on it. But this is a training plant and it will creep up amongst the branches and leaves of other bushes and trees here, but it is an odd looking thing. It has very thin stems - almost got a bit of a hairy situation going on.
Jane: Something about that caught my eye, I don't know why. Are there any particular Euphorbia specifically that you'd recommend to somebody who was wanting to get started collecting Euphorbias and they've maybe got Euphorbia trigona they got from the garden centre? Where do you go next with Euphorbias, when you want to start getting more into these plants?
Bob: I suspect that one of the more common plants that people are going to be able to easily get hold of, is something like Euphorbia obesa which is a South African plant, it's a small rounded globular plant - there is one in the bed over there.
Jane: As I child, that was a plant that I absolutely adored.
Bob: It goes under various common names, the tartan ball and stuff like this. They are very attractive plants in their own right, but of course they're produced by the millions in Holland and various places, but strangely enough, they're quite endangered in their natural habitat. We visited one habitat of Euphorbia obesa and it was quite decimated in South Africa, which is a shame.
Jane: Is that because people have taken them from the wild?
Bob: Yes, a lot of it is, and this was on a protected area and it was sponsored by the BCSS actually. It was at a place called Kendroo, on a farmer's land and he took us to the area. It wasn't quite near his farm house because these South African farms are quite vast, it was a ten minute drive away, it was fenced as well. But he was quite upset because he said he had a school party come down from Cape Town to have a look round at this habitat and he said when he went back and had a look, there were lots of holes where plants had been taken away.
Jane: It's a shame isn't it? If it's produced easily, then why do you need to take it from the wild?
Bob: Exactly.
Jane: I guess that's the temptation of these fascinating plants and people. Is the care of that plant, like you would do with a cactus or succulent, lots of sun and no water in winter and cool in winter?
Bob: Generally speaking, but it depends where you're growing them, you can probably grow these on a window ledge indoors quite easily in a good light position and it can probably keep this thing growing all through the year. In this particular environment that I've got in the greenhouse everything tends to be a bit drier over the winter, kept warmer, but drier, and therefore they're not in active growth any more. That's the sort of thing that most people start off with if you want to start your Euphorbia collection. Then you'll probably get into some of the millii types as well, they don't have to be the bog standard hybrid types of millii but you can get, very easily through some of the specialist nurseries, things like this, it's not a millii but it's very akin to a millii. These are quite easy to grow - little shrubby plants.
Jane: I'm looking at the label there, Euphorbia - what's the Latin name on that one?
Bob: Euphorbia antefaciensis.
Jane: I like the little, tiny lemon yellow flowers on that. It's very delicate.
Bob: That's right.
Jane: It's a fantastic collection. Is there anything else in here that is your absolute baby, that you would, in the case of a fire, you'd be grabbing it first. Is there anything you really prize above all else?
Bob: Yes, there are one or two things I guess, although I may struggle to lift some of them quickly. This is Dorstenia gigas and this is from the island of Socotra - again, compared to some of the plants that I've seen in habitat over there, this is still only a baby, but it's a fairly substantial plant.
Jane: How big would that get in the wild then?
Bob: I've seen them three-and-a-half metres high and almost a metre fat, so it's a really peculiar plant. So things like that, I would like to take that away with me. Also even going down to the small stuff, very much like this Euphorbia gymnocalycioides, this is from Ethiopia, and if anybody is growing cacti and succulents, the gymnocalycioides label attached to it, of course, is because it very much resembles the Gymnocalycium, the cactus genus.
Jane: If you were rushing out from a fire, you'd probably have more luck picking that up because it's the size of a conker, isn't it? What's the purpose of the bigger plants over here, is that a strap to lift it out when you repot?
Bob: No, no, it was a bit of... what do you call the stuff?
Jane: Like matting?
Bob: Yes, capillary matting, it escaped me for a second, there's bit of capillary matting that goes down there to the drainage hole and occasionally I used to sit it in a bath of water so it could soak, they love a drink, they really do take a lot of water during the growing season.
Jane: I guess with the size of that caudex you could imagine. I guess this is one of the things we get thinking: "They're dry plants, we mustn't water them," but so often in the growing season you realise they can take on a lot of water.
Bob: Indeed they do, yes. I think this is a misconception. It's also a misconception with a lot of cactus plants, actually, that you don't need to water them very much. The fact is, if you don't water them, generally speaking, they'll survive.
Jane: They'll just sit there, I guess?
Bob: Yes, and do nothing. To grow successfully they do need a certain amount of water and certainly some of these succulents can take an enormous amount of water - much, much more than people probably will realise.
Jane: Yes, that's very true. Well, that is an incredible-looking plant. I would love to see a three metre high one of those because that is just stunning. Is there anything that you've got a love/hate relationship with, that you can't get rid of but you can't get really get along with? There must be something that drives you nuts?
Bob: There is, it probably drives a lot of people nuts, there's one 'round the corner. I keep pulling them out and throwing them away.
Jane: I think I know what I'm coming round to here - it's the old mother of millions, as they call it?
Bob: That's it! They come up everywhere. Quite frankly, they're quite an attractive plant. Nicely-grown, you'll never get rid of them! Funnily enough, they are not very common in habitat.
Jane: Oh, really?
Bob: Yes, there's a Kalanchoe tomentosa, which is the hairy-leafed one. You very rarely see it in Madagascar. You will find it in various places growing, but it's like the Euphorbia obesa, bog standard house plant being grown in Europe, basically. Those things, they'll come up and go, however much you try and get rid of them there will always be some sitting around somewhere.
Jane: Indeed, very true.
Bob: Apart from that, no, I don't think so really. I try to keep my plant collection down to stuff that I find attractive to grow. I think you'll find some of the least attractive plants are some of the rarest around. If we're still passionate hobbyists, we have a duty to try and grow these things as well.
Jane: My eye has been drawn to something over here. I can see a Kalanchoe here. Is this what you've propagated from leaves? I've forgotten the species.
Bob: This is Kalanchoe orgyalis and these are leaves taken from a plant. We were in Madagascar last November - these were leaves taken from a plant and they're just stuck into the pumice there, they're regenerating.
Jane: As easy as that? Just from the petiole, they're growing?
Bob: That's right.
Jane: They're lovely aren't they? They've got such a gorgeous colour.
Bob: They do need coming out now.
Jane: What will you do with those now? Will the original leaf be cut off or just allowed to die back?
Bob: Yes, that's the best plan. I'm going to make you a gift of that one.
Jane: That would be lovely. How often have you been you managed to go to Madagascar and see these plants in the wild?
Bob: My wife, Beryl, has been with me and I've been with several Dutch mates. Probably about five times we've been, over the years. The latest excursion was November last year. Every time we go, we try and find somewhere different to go - a different place to look at, but we're always finding different plants all over the place.
Jane: That must be wonderful to be able to see the plants in their setting and hopefully helps you appreciate how to grow them a little bit better as well, back at home?
Bob: It does to a degree, yes. One thing you do learn, is the soil composition. I always bring back soil samples with me and have them analysed. One of the things I've found in Madagascan habitats, you're talking about soil having a condition of about 4.5PH, so it's fairly acid. Again, another thing, I try and translate that here by using, if I can, rain water, or if not I acidify the tap water.
Jane: I have to say I have lots of listeners who live in apartments and flats and don't have access to rainwater, but I have to say, personally, lucky as I am to have a garden and to have access to lots of water butts, I do love using rain water on my house plants. They do seem to like it and you can get away with tap water for a lot of things but I do definitely think if you can get rainwater, it's a wonderful resource, isn't it?
Bob: I think so. It has the added advantage as well, with the number of plants that I've got here to water individually is virtually impossible, you generally have to hosepipe them. I have a tub full of rainwater. I just pump it out of there. It also negates that you don't mark-up leaves with the salts.
Jane: That's very true, I do love the rainwater. I've now got a milkman, an old fashioned milkman, I don't know if this is a ridiculous thing to do, I don't do it so much for my cactus and succulents, more with my foliage plants, I do now find myself filling up, when the bottle of milk is finished, I go to the water butt, fill it up with rain water, bring it inside, bring it to room temperature so they get, I don't know if it's any good for the plants, but in my weird mind it has some benefit that they're getting a little bit of calcium, I don't know, and I'm rinsing out the milk bottle at the same time so I feel quite good about that. It doesn't seem to have done any harm so far. I guess we all have our own little foibles.
Bob: Yes, you do, You're talking about warm water, keeping it warm before you water the plants, a lot of people say that's the best way to go - don't do it straight out of the tap because it's cold - and a Dutch mate of mine, every year he wakes up his plants by watering his plants directly out of his central heating boiler, so God knows what temperature that is!
Jane: Wow, okay, that's interesting!
Bob: That's the first water. He doesn't do it all the time.
Jane: If I've been desperate to water something and I've got cold rainwater, especially in the winter, I have been known to put it in the microwave to heat it up quickly. The things we do for our plants, it's amazing, isn't it!?
Bob: Yes.
Jane: Is this a quiet time of year, when you're not doing a lot of repotting and you're in a holding pattern until spring?
Bob: Yes, most things now are getting into their dormancy and even now, in the middle of November, we've got some really nice weather, I suppose winter is a bit late coming. Most things, as you can see, a lot of things haven't got leaves on and you can see a lot of things that have had leaves on are now starting to brown, wither and drop. So that's one of the drawbacks of having a succulent collection like this, is that you're forever hoovering up the leaves.
Jane: It's a wonderful collection and it's great to see and it's obviously so well cared for and tended - this greenhouse is immaculate compared to my greenhouse and a lot of greenhouses I come to see. It's very, very neat and tidy. You obviously take great pride in your collection, so thank you very much for showing me 'round.
Bob: It's been a pleasure, thank you.
Jane: Thank you so much to Bob for sharing his collection with me. Now there's time for a Question of the Week, which comes from TheScentedGent - what a wonderful Instagram handle. TheScentedGent wanted to know how to get his Monstera adansonii and his newly purchased moss pole, which looks like a pole with coir on it, to make friends with each other. This is a really good question and something I hadn't thought of explaining before. This is something that is worth considering when you're looking to get a plant growing up a moss pole, particularly if it's coir.
The plant won't latch on and grow without any help so you need to provide some kind of anchorage. The thing that I usually recommend is something called German Pins or Mossing pins. So I wandered into my local florist and said: "Can I buy a dozen German pins, please?" and she sold me them for 40p, so they're pretty easy to get your hands on if you're anywhere near a florist. I'm sure you can buy them online as well, but hey, why not buy them locally with zero packaging? They went into my pocket. That's an easy way to get hold of these things.
What are they? They're little metal pins, you can get various sizes, but the ones I've got are about 3cm - an inch and a bit long - and 1cm wide. They're U-shaped but they've got a little bend in the end which makes the end rather bigger, I'm not explaining this very well! They're U-shaped with a bump in the end and I'll post a picture in the show notes so you can see what they look like.
What you need to do is get your stem nestled between the prongs of the U and push them into the coir or the moss, gently, so that the stem doesn't get crushed but that it is anchored in place and they should go in quite a long way, you need to angle them sideways and up or down usually, to make them work, and you may take a few attempts to get them in exactly the right position, but they work really, really well at holding stems in place. If you find that you've got really meaty stems of a Monstera or something and they are wider than the Mossing pin, they are bendable, you should be able to widen them fairly easily, so make sure they're not crushing the stem. I'll put a little story on Instagram to show you how this is done, but this way you should find that adventitious roots of climbing plants start to appear and mesh with the coir, it also helps if you keep the coir slightly damp through misting that way the plant is more likely to derive some benefit from being close to that source of moisture. So, mossing pins, or German pins, are what you need!
If, however, you're growing a plant on an obelisk, this is what my Monstera adansonii is growing on, the thing that I've found that works really well are those tiny little clips that come on Phalaenopsis orchids, holding them to the stake, I take all the stakes out of my Phalaenopsis because I really don't like the way that they look and I let them trail. But I do save the stakes and I save those little clips which I then use to clip my Monstera adansonii stems in place, so if you've got some of those you can use those, alternately you can just buy tiny hair clips which work just as well. You can do them in the same colour as the obelisk so they fade into the background or going for a really blingy contrasting colour if that's the look that you're looking for.
Just remember when you're anchoring the moss pole into the soil, it's probably wise to have it going right to the bottom of the pot because the taller it is the more likely the plant will become top-heavy, so anchor it really, really well. You can even use a couple of cable ties to attach it to the bottom of the pot so it really is firmly in place because there's nothing worse than the whole thing toppling over and yes, I have been there!
I hope that answers your question, TheScentedGent, and I'm sure that florists around the world will be running out of German / mossing pins before you know it! If you've got a question for On The Ledge, drop me a line,
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Jane: That's all for this week's show, we'll be back next Friday when we'll be talking about the death months! Yes, how to get your house plants through the winter period. So set your SAD lamps to overdrive and your grow lights to full power and I'll see you in a week's time. Bye!
[music]
Jane: The music in this week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, the tracks Chiefs by Jahzzar and Endeavour by Jahzzar and An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day Gokana, by Samuel Corwin. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons, see JanePerrone.com for details.
[music]
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Bob Potter’s glasshouse is packed with succulent treasures. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Bob Potter has been growing succulents since he was a child helping his grandfather in the garden. He spent 35 years running the nursery Toobees Exotics, and although the nursery closed in 2016, Bob is still active in the succulent community, including his role as treasurer of the International Euphorbia Society.
He specialises in growing succulents from Madagascar and South Africa, which includes some very fascinating caudiciform (fat-bodied) plants and spiny succulents!
I first met Bob at Cactusworld Live in September and I visited his glasshouse in Surrey in the UK earlier this month to chat about all things succulent.
Thanks to Bobby Ho for appearing in this week’s Meet the Listener. His Aroid Adoration Facebook group is here.
Here’s a list of the plants we mention and the issues we discuss in our chat…
Cyphostemma juttae. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Bob Potter in his greenhouse. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Kalanchoe orgyalis. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
One of the first succulents Bob grew as a child was Chamaecereus silvestrii, the peanut cactus.
Bob grows many fascinating caudiciform or fat-bodied plants, including Xerosicyos pubescens from Madagascar. He keeps his glasshouse at around 16/17C all year round.
Fockea edulis is another caudiciform succulent from South Africa. Bob points out that in their native habitat the caudex is usually mostly hidden from view underground.
Bob also grows Pachypodium brevicaule and Pachypodium densiflora
Euphorbia aureoviridiflora comes from the north of Madagascar
One of the most popular Euphorbias is Euphorbia milii aka crown of thorns, the super-spiny succulent grown for its beautiful flowers - there are loads of cultivars due to intensive breeding. Euphorbia milii var. splendens (syn E. spendens) is also very popular.
Monadenium spinescens from Tanzania is now officially classed as a Euphorbia but Bob doesn’t agree with this reclassification!
Euphorbia venenifica from West Africa is a columnar Euphorbia that can become treelike in its native home.
I fell in love with the giant leaved Cyphostemma juttae!
Alluaudia humbertii is a super-spiny succulent from Madagascar.
Bob pots all his plants into pure pumice as a growing medium, because it is very free draining which avoids root rot problems, promotes a good root system, and you can see when it dries out as it turns very pale. He finds it easier to repot as roots come away from pumice more easily. Bear in mind that plants in pure pumice do need to be fed a lot more as the pumice holds no nutrients.
HEALTH WARNING: Take care when handling Euphorbias as they contain a milky sap which is toxic and an irritant to skin and eyes. They are also toxic to pets if eaten. Euphorbia abdelkuri from Socotra Island is particularly poisonous.
If you are starting out with Euphorbias, Euphorbia obesa from South Africa is a great place to start, and is produced by the million, although it is endangered in its habitat.
Euphorbia antefaciensis looks like a tiny version of E. milii with lemon yellow flowers.
The plant that I describe as a “mess of spaghetti” is actually a Syrigia from Madagascar!
Dorstenia gigas from Sukotra gets 3.5 m high in the wild and the trunk can get 1m fat.
Euphorbia gymnocalycioides from resembles The cactus genus Gymnocalycium.
One plant that’s a bit of a pest in Bob’s glasshouse is mother of millions, Kalanchoe daigremontiana, although this plant is now rare in its native home.
Kalanchoe orgyalis (copper spoons) from Madagascar is a wonderfully tactile furry succulent.
Want to learn more about the succulents of Madagascar and South Africa? Join the British Cactus and Succulent Society and the International Euphorbia Society to access loads of great advice and expertise on caring for these plants.
Photograph: Jane Perrone.
Question of the week
Mossing pins. Photograph: Jane Perrone.
The Scented Gent wanted to know how to get his Monstera adansonii to climb up a moss pole. I recommend getting hold of some mossing pins aka German pins, which can easily be sourced online, or even better from your local florist! The stems can then be anchored into place on the pole, just make sure you don’t crush the stems - you can widen the ‘u’ shape if you need to! It also helps to keep the coir/moss moist by misting to encourage adventitious roots to clamp on.
If you have an obelisk or trellis you’d like a trailing plant to climb up, try using the tiny clips that are used to hold moth orchids onto their stakes - or you can buy teeny tiny hair clips!
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!
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CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day Gokana by Samuel Corwin, Chiefs by Jahzzar and Endeavour by Jahzzar, and Overthrown by Josh Woodward. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons.
Logo design by Jacqueline Colley.