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Sunday, June 15, 2014

Mother of Millions....

Some people call this plant "Mother of Thousands".  I beg to differ.  I call it "Mother of Millions"!

I am not even sure where I got the first plant.  They are Kalanchoe daigremontiana.  That's for future reference for you are brave enough to want to grow some.

The little rosettes at the edge of the leaves drop off when ready and plant themselves where ever they land.  It's probably a good thing that some of them land sideways and some face down.  If they didn't the whole world would be covered with them.

 A prime example is my back yard.  They are happily growing wherever they want to.

I like the looks of them, so most of the time I just let them be.

Here in AZ, if something volunteers to grow in your yard, you let it if you like it.  I even have a couple of trees in the back yard that wandered in by themselves.  I let them stay.
A couple of weeks ago, I found a relative at Walmart.  This one is Kalanchoe aff. marmorata.

Anyway, I looked it up in my succulent book and found it is  a relative of the other one. 

I kind of figured that when I saw all of the kids on the edge of the leaves.

More millions.


This is a fairly young plant and they grow pretty fast, once they get started. 

While I was re potting stuff this morning, Tessie wandered out to see what was going on. 

When she saw the plant, she exclaimed, "Oh!  Babies!".  And for once she volunteered to help...  Little did I know...

She was actually there to help herself.
 She has done this before.  She knows that these will stay "babies" for a while. 

She re pots them in tiny pots and keeps them moist. It takes a few weeks for them to really root and they don't mind being transplanted...

So for a while she has real plants in her townhouse or wherever she decides to place them.

When they "wear out", as she calls it, she gives them back to me and simply grabs a few more. 

All she has to do is keep them moist and make sure that they are not standing on their little heads.  She has real, live plants in her mini rooms.

The babies keep dropping for a while.  All you have to do is remember to rotate the crops, so to speak.  When they do root, they can be potted up or planted in the ground.  Take your pick.

I just thought that you would like to know that you can have real, live plants.  Not just those silly things that we make out of poly clay, paper and potpourri.

I am going back to take the pickle(pitch) fork away from her now.  If I don't we may have tiny pots on every flat surface in the house.  Maybe I should distract her with a cookie or two...

See you tomorrow.

8 comments:

Smaller Places said...

Oh! I'm going to ask my landlord how she'd feel about letting kalanchoe run wild and just putting down some pavers for access to the back shed.

We've never figured out what to do with my yard that doesn't take on major maintenance and add dramatically to the water bill.

The grandmommy said...

This is such a great idea! Will keep my eyes open the next time I go to Lowes. Thanks! :-)

Caseymini said...

I go to Lowe's often. I have never seen any at ours. This is the first time I have seen this variety anywhere. And at Walmart, of all places!

Unknown said...

Hello from Spain: very interesting. Keep in touch

Lucille said...

It's an interesting plant, Casey! I'm not much of a gardener myself. Only once in my life did I have a garden and it was a flower garden. I planted it from seeds and it did very well but only because I had a retired farmer living next door who counseled me when it came time to do the weeding so that I would not throw away the plant and keep the weed which I probably would have done!

12Create said...

Very cool plants and it is neat you can plant the babies in miniature pots.

Deb Roberts said...

Casey, you and Tessie are brilliant! I have at least a dozen various types of kalanchoe in my yard but I've never seen this one before and now I'll be on a crusade to find one because they're perfect little live mini plants. Having live mini plants in scale for the dollhouses would make me so very, very happy. I've been tempted to try some Princess Pines in tiny pots because they have a very small root system but the plant is still a bit on the large size for anything except a potted tree. These look just perfect!

Caseymini said...

Deb, just be aware that they don't stay small for a long time. They must be replaced over and over.