Transcript:
It’s a beautiful day today. A bit cloudy dog, but it has been raining. I think early this morning or last night. I’m not really sure you might notice a few differences today. The first of which is that. I’m wearing shorts. Patched and the second would be multiple camera angles . And if you’re wondering how I managed to achieve that, let me show you. You’re starting on the camera. That’s right to camera anyway. Before we get to the suspected, this episode is going to pick up from where we last left off, and that’s where I was harvesting pops, and you’ll notice that in the course of doing that, I had to trim some of the flower stalks, and in this episode, we’re going to discuss the things that we could do to flower stalks, so let’s begin now before we begin. Let’s first put things into context. I live in the southern hemisphere. I’m from Melbourne, Australia, which means that our seasons run in Reverse from the northern hemisphere, So asked a lot of you who’s watching from the northern hemisphere, especially those are the higher latitudes You’re heading into winter. Now we down here in. Australia are heading into summer we’re pretty close to the end of November and December is the official start of summer now? Let’s talk a bit about flower stalks. There’s a few of them here as you can see behind me. There’s this blue butterfly for some sedum right here more. Hev areas, They’re starting to push out flower stalks, and I think one of the first things that you have to keep in mind is when do the flower stalks form if you live in a climate where the four seasons are distinct, then you will notice that they would flower at least twice a year and it’s almost at the same time every year, so the first point of discussion is when the flowers form the answer to that is very simple. There’s a few factors involved, but the main thing is, of course, number one. It has to be mature enough because it’s really young. Plants are more focused on their own growth rather than pushing out flower stalks and you’ll find that mature plants or more established plants are more likely to push up stalks, so the first item is maturity. The second item is dormancy. Flowering plants require a period of dormancy before they push out flowers. And, as you know, a lot of plants go dormant during winter, particularly obvious for those that shed their leaves in autumn or fall and by the time spring arrives, that’s. After winter, they will be producing lots of flower buds and flowers and that’s hay fever season. I’m always a victim of that, But in case you didn’t know. Succulents also go dormant in summer, even the summer growers because when it is too hot, what they do is they try to protect themselves from the heat of the Sun and they go into a pseudo dormancy state. You’ll definitely notice this with Echeverria. Snows in spring, they would be opening wide, even raising their leaves up, and I find that a race Leaf form allows them to gather more water. You know, spreading your wings. Come this way allows you to catch lots more from the rainwater or any water source from above, but as it gets closer to summer closes up this way and with their leaves real tight like this zip hiding from the Sun. And during that point, they would be reducing their metabolism, something like that, we would not be expending as much energy trying to grow because the weather is harsh. And because of that, you will find that sometime. During autumn or fall? Some flower buds would come out again, and this is usually something that happens after dormancy, so we have two dormancy cycles throughout the year and to flowering cycles throughout the year. That’s if you have the four distinct seasons if you live somewhere in the tropics where it doesn’t get too cold and the weather, the climate is only warm or hot. Then you only have the pseudo dormancy in summer. Of course you have the summer dormant plans like AO News. But for summer growers or plants that grow during the warmer months. Their only hope for getting dormancy is during the heat of summer, and I find that for each of areas, they tend to go dormant as soon as the temperature goes over 35 degrees. That’s about 90 s or 100 Fahrenheit somewhere in that range, and if it’s the first time for your plants reaching that temperatures, you might want to protect them. You know, put a bit of shade. I’ll be showing you that in future episodes, having said that those are the two main triggers for blooming with succulents. That was the first point of discussion now. The next part is, what do we do in it? See that this video is still part of my propagation series of videos, and, of course, the first thing that you can do is to use them for propagation in terms of propagating It. Flower stalks. There’s a few things you can do one of the things that you could do just to remove the flowers from the flower stalk in this case. I’m going to chop off just this part and leave the rest of the stuff alone. It’s best if you could leave a lot of the leaves intact in the stem. Because if you look at the nodes where the leaves are connected, this is where, potentially where the new crops will be growing out of so you would want to have as many nodes you can left understand, so if you remove the flowers on the tip of their stem to probably keep trying to produce flowers along the lower nodes, so just keep removing them until eventually it just gives up and produce us a pop rather than trying to produce flowers, and if you think it looks familiar, it is because it basically is the same principle as beheading a plant. Only this is the head and this is the stump The pups will grow all around the stump, where the leaf nodes are connected. The second method is where you take the entire stock as it is. Basically, you’re going to chop it off the whole thing, and you will want to replant it and let it grow its own roots and what would happen Here is that the replanted stock would think it is a new plant. It would figure out that there are no plant that’s. It is going terminal since it’s just a flower stock knows it’s gonna die And in order to save itself or self-preservation kicks in, it’s going to produce new plants, new pups and understand along the beef nodes that way it can continue on perpetuate its species that way by the time they stop dies. It has a new plant and it lives on through those pups. Then finally, there’s a third method. The third method is actually a mix between the first two like the first method. You’re going to remove all of the flowers and like the second method, you’re going to remove the stem, detach it from the parent plant and let it grow its own roots. There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to each technique and let’s go through them one by one, so with the first method that is just chopping off the flowers. This is going to be the easiest and this risky among the bunch. I guess because what you have is a stem That’s still connected to the main plant, which means that the main plant is feeding the stem. Ergo, there is not going to be any gap in the growth of the stem and by that I mean that it would continue growing. There’s no interruptions and among the three metals. This is the fastest way to grow pups If you’re lucky for it to grow pups, and I say, if you’re lucky because right now the stem the flower stalk, it thinks it is still a flower stalk. The plant thing is that a flower stalks, so it’s still more likely that whatever pushes out of the leaf nodes a new, so with this method, you get better growth, but the trade-off is less likelihood of getting pops. You’re still more likely to get flowers unless there’s an anomaly or an accident. Happy accident going on here. So that’s pretty much it for the first method for the second method. You’re going to chop off the entire stock, so imagine this being the patch and plant that on its own, it will grow its own roots and on its own. The flower stock will think that it is its own plant its own system and it will figure out that there’s no plant no plant. Let no pop and as you know. Flower stalks are terminal, which means that after the flowers finish blooming, the whole stock will dry out and eventually die. It takes months, but it will happen so before that happens, it has to go into self-preservation mode and to that end what it would try to do is to push out pops along the leaf nodes just to continue just to perpetuate its own stations so to speak so to ensure the survival of its species, it’s going to produce pop’s children and it will live on through its shading. That’s the second level, of course disadvantages, there’s a period of interruption with the growth as you chop off the stem and allow it to reroute that in itself, takes a bit of time usually a few weeks several weeks, maybe even a month, and during that time, it could focus all of its energy into growing roots so until that happens, you’re not going to expect anything else to happen here, and that’s pretty much it now. The third method, as I’ve said, it’s a hybrid mix between the first two methods that is the first method we’re going to remove the flowers from the stock and from the second method we’re going to remove the stem flower stalk from the main plant, and that’s what I would like to take a very good compromise with the first two. So what happens is at this replanted, Of course, which means that there’s a better likelihood of the leaf nodes pushing up pops rather than flowers compared to the first method by removing the flowers at the tip. This means that it’s going to focus all of the growth on the lateral meristems as far as the flower stalk is concerned. This is the head flowers, the flowering tip. And if you remove the apical meristem. This is the apical meristem right here. If you remove that to activate all the lateral meristem, so everything here would be all of the growth would be focused on these nodes so in effect. This is still slower than the first method, but a lot faster than the second method, And this is what I would recommend you doing and much like my recent video live propagation. You see flower stalks? I’d recommend that you pick out our stocks that are thick with larger leaves as opposed to very thin flower stalks because those would dry out easily. And that’s another thing that you have to take note of when attempting something like this so far I only mentioned one of the things that you could do with flower stuffs and that’s propagation and now we’re going to discuss the second thing and that’s removing all of the flower stalks to prevent insect infestation. So if you’re wondering why I had to lead this video saying that I live in the southern hemisphere and we’re going to summer well. Summer is where a lot of the insects. Come out and play. I’m pretty sure you’ve noticed that with your own plants and like they say, prevention is a lot better than cure, so before we had deep into somewhere, It’s a good idea to remove all the flower stalks that I’m not going to use as you recall. There’s a few plants that I used in their pollination video or our few weeks back, but for the rest of them like this one, it’s off with their stalks. apart from the health reasons of avoiding pests, another reason is a matter of aesthetics, And I think that arguably Echeverria slook matter without flower stalks, it’s just messy. I guess it’s a quiet taste. Because once you’ve seen the flower stalks enough, you would start thinking, they’re messy, So I’m the type of person who sits at that camp of no flower stalks, and I firmly believe that the rosettes look good on their own. They don’t need flowers, except maybe to identify them, so what? I usually do is to take photos of the flowers. Keep them in my archives. Just label them yeah, so. I can confirm what species they are. Yeah, that’s pretty much it. So by flower stalks, this echeverria. Big red has a flower stalk. That’s already blooming and. I think I can use this for method two. I just removed the entire stem, so let’s go do that. I tried going as low as possible. Keeping all the leaves that way, there’s more nodes to work with. I’m going to give this a couple of days to candles over, and then I plant this in soil. I’ve got another big red here. It has this flower stalk and as you can see. The tip has lots of aphids. So I’m going to remove the flowers and because of that, I think this is a perfect example of the third method of propagation where I detach the whole flower stalk and remove the flower tips . I’ve also got this echeverria. Double Delight! It is pushing up a flower Stop and getting quite tall now. The tips has some flower buds. It hasn’t bloomed yet. I think this would be a very good candidate for the first method. So chop off the tip here and I’m going to leave the stop assess. I’m tempted to pull out the leaves, but I can’t be bothered right now. Yeah, let’s leave it at that. You feels like my heart is . Get back and and one final thing. One more reason why you want to remove flower stalks is because large flower stalks can distort the shape of the rosette. So as soon as I see that the flower stuff is pushing hard against the leaves, I try to remove it, and this tends to happen with larger, positive ARS like anything that’s based on a flora so of the freely hybrids that you see here. These are the ones most prone to that problem, and that’s it for this episode on what to do with the flower stalks. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. This video make sure to. Like and subscribe if you want to watch more this type of content and I’ll see in the next episode. Bye Special. Thanks to my patreon supporters at Escrito. Julie, she’ll snap to ignore any know The Governer – in the lair when, or resume Youtube in everyone else pledge on Patreon. Thank you so much and finally you can check out my Instagram. That’s a serious Capades. I post a photo furniture area every single day under the hashtag Daily Echeverria .