| FREQUENTLY
ASKED QUESTIONS 8. When should I
water Adromischus plants?
Since Adromischus
are succulents, do not water much compared to ordinary pot
plants! From UK experience, only the tiniest of
pots would need watering more often than once
every two weeks in a growing period, and about
once ever four weeks when resting. Pots over
4" (10 cm.) would require less than this
general guidance. Basically, let the potting mix
dry out between watering. Use rainwater if your
drinking water is hard (alkaline).
In general, give
modest watering all year around. Adro's span both
the Eastern summer and Western winter rainfall
regions of Southern Africa. However, this does
not seem to make much difference to their growing
times! They initiate new growth at the start of
winter, when the poor UK weather means I can only
provide the minimum of water to prevent excessive
shrivelling. With warmer days in early spring, I
water and fertilise as soon as a possible, to
pump the new leaves up to adult size.
Terminal
inflorescences rather than leaves are initiated
as the days lengthen into summer. I thin out the
inflorescences, since they can drop excessive
amounts of nectar. Wasps and ants are welcome
visitors into the greenhouse to clear up this
'feast'. Otherwise, the nectar turns into spots
of mould in the following winter and can
permanently scar leaf surfaces.
This is hardly new
advice! The above is my attempt to explain how to
grow these South African succulents. Below, is
advice from 200 years ago, fortunately not too
dissimilar, but rather more elegantly worded. A
hero of mine, Adrian Hardy Haworth wrote in 1819
in Supplementum Plantarum Succulentarum, page 27,
at the end of his Cotyledon section:
OBS. 2. In closing the
account of this genus, so enriched from the
gardens of Kew, I cannot refrain from
transcribing the following passage from
Miller, at the end of the same genus, as far
as it relates to the culture of succulent
plants, because it is worthy of being
recorded in letters of gold ; and more
especially as the truth it inculcates, or
rather complains of, still continues to
exist, to the great injury of our succulent
collections, almost universally.
Speaking of succulent
plants in October, he says,
"at which time you
should remove them into the conservatory:
placing them as near the windows as
possible at first, letting them have as
much free open air as the season will
permit, by keeping the windows open
whenever the weather is good. And now you
must begin to abate your waterings,
giving it to them sparingly; but you
should not suffer their leaves to shrink
for want of moisture, which is another
extreme some people run into for want of
a little observation ; for when they are
suffered to shrink [ not die gradually
away ] for want of sufficient moisture to
keep their vessels distended, they are
rendered incapable of discharging this
moisture whenever they receive it
again."
Miller's Dictionary, ed. 8.
I humbly hope this golden
passage from our great horticulturist, will
have more effect over those who read it, than
all my own more feeble pen has heretofore
stated to the same effect.
For, at this enlightened
period, it requires but a moderate share of
philosophy to allow that air and exercise,
and a due supply of warmth and food, are all
essential requisites towards the healthful
support of every organized being, whether of
the animal or vegetable kingdom. And air and
the rustling winds are the exercises of
plants ; and humidity and water are at least
the vehicles which convey their food ; and
warmth the medium which adapts them to
receive it in a salutary way. Although the
degree of warmth actually requisite, is as
different for the different species as the
differing climates over which the Creator has
been pleased to distribute them, by no means
at random, but all in harmoniously beneficial
order. And those which it has pleased their
great Architect to place in equinoxial
latitudes appear to be more adapted to the
reception of nutriment above ground by
absorption from the air, in the dewy places
of their nativity, than those whose absorbing
orifices are less capaciously expanded in
more temperate countries ; or in those still
more chilly regions which approach the
confines of continual snow. There, the great
business of nutrition appears to be from the
root almost alone. And hence, perhaps, the
impatience which Alpine plants evince to
heat, which actually exhausts and overpowers
them.
O Jehovah !
in sapientis, ea fecisti. - DAVID.
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