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It has been five weeks since I started the experiment to see if badly etiolated (is this the term for a plant out of shape due to a lack of light and too much watering?) lithops plants can be saved and corrected. Well, this is how far the plants are now. My initial plan was to make them wrinkle and shrivel to a better size to make it easier for the new leaves to come out next year. The pot was exposed to lots and lots of sun and heat and was not watered at all. In fact, I am not going to water them until next year. I was worried since they've never seen this much sunlight they'd get burnt but there was no problem with that. Their current state is definitely an improvement. The two less longer plants are slowly nearing the "mark of shortness" I've set for them. The mark being as close as possible to the substrate level. The substrate level shortness is what I want for the long monster as well but it is not realistic within this year. It just needs to shrivel enoug...

The other Mesembs I got in Essen mostly have familiar names but also some that are new to me. I'm very excited to grow them all on the windowsill. My experience with Cheiridopsis was positive so far so I got more of them. Actually, thinking of Cheiridopsis, I imagine rather large plants but the ones I got are so small I could confuse them with Conophytums. I'll try to keep them in this size and shape. This one is a Cheiridopsis, too! Who would have thought! There are also two quite different Antimimas. The first one looks just like the Antimima fenestrata I already have now, all covered in dried up leaves, which is a relief. The second one I'd never take for an Antimima at all. But it's a cute little tree. The young Nananthus margaretiferus came with a promise of beautiful flowers. The Glottiphyllum neilii is the most compactly grown and intensely colored Glottiphyllum I've ever seen. I also got a couple of tiny Trichodiademas. I'm still figuring them out. They ...

Firstly, I'd like to introduce the new lithops I got from Klaus Ingenwepelt. I bought a couple of plants of each kind so there are actually more plants than the photos below and they are still in their original pots and substrates. Normally, lithops have it more cozier at my place, growing in groups of at least two in one container. But I'm generous with room these days and it can wait. I was not very successful buying adult white-flowering lithops before but I think I have more experience now so I decided to get mostly hallii, karasmontana and julii this time, knowing that they were grown perfectly shaped which will give them a good start on my windowsill. They all have nice and sharp patterns and the best size. Even the aucampiae, that tend to grow huge in commercial nurseries, are so wonderfully small and round. This is definitely the goal for us hobby growers :) Among the yellow-flowering lithops I really liked L. hookeri v. lutea and would have bought several but there was...

Back to business :) I have spent such a wonderful day in Essen. I think my friend was pretty bored but I needed to see all those lovely plants in detail so I was just wandering from table to table, letting the impressions sink in. I was also trying to listen to some conversations among cacti growers - those people can be quite eccentric! And I mean it in a best possible way. Well, I knew where my journey was taking me from the start - to the Klaus Ingenwepelt's mesemb table. So, after I got myself a Sinningia (leucotricha?) and an Albuca spiralis at a very reasonable price (I wanted both for a while) I went straight there. I thought Mr. Ingenwepelt was a little skeptical towards me last year when I told him I grew my plant on a sunny windowsill. I was pretty sure he didn't take me seriously after that. But in fact he remembered me! And, as I reported to him that all his plants have survived and are doing fine, even the conophytums that were back then new to me, we started talki...

Dear readers, as you might know I went to the Cactus and Succulent Market in Essen on Sunday July 5th and I would rather post a long report about that but there is a pressing matter I feel like I have to write about first. I went to Essen with a friend by the German railway company Deutsche Bahn. My friend went from Luxembourg and I joined her in Trier. The travel distance Trier-Essen takes 4h30 to 5h according to our plan, depending on how many times we have to change trains. For the whole trip I paid 51€ with BahnCard 25 discount and she paid the full prise of about 85€. So basically it should have been a one-day trip of 4h there and 4h back for me with the return train leaving at 18h00 and arriving back in Trier as early as 21h30. Good plan, we thought. We even considered delays and possible travel by a later train. There was enough time. At this point I need to mention that we absolutely had to come back the same day as we had work on Monday and she also had to be there for her you...

I tried to grow L. verruculosa before but the plants didn't survived in the long run. This time I got some nicely grown specimen from Kakteen Haage nursery and they are such beauties, especially when arranged naturally. I love the "blood drops" and the color and the shape. It's gonna be difficult to keep them alive but I believe I have better conditions for my plants now compared to the old apartment so we'll see.

I'll continue the introductions :) The new guys are the lovely L. dinteri C206 from Cono's Paradise nursery (german), L. lesliei v. hornii C015 from Rare Plants nursery (czech) and some surprisingly well-grown L. schwantesii from a local hardware store.

Since I have much more room now I'm getting more plants. I've sown some too but the heatwave is trying very hard to ruin it. The adult plants are truly enjoying it! It's 38°C in the shade, no idea how much in the sun, it's crazy! And it seems the living stones can't get enough of it. Anyway, I'll be posting about new pebbles this weekend and will start with Lithops ruschiorum I purchased recently. They vary from completely white and opaque to white with fine golden lines. The surface is a bit  rough, similar to L. vallis-mariae, I imagine, eve though I've never had those.