Transcript:
I don’t have a green thumb. Well, anyone can grow succulents in a container like this, so what? I’ve done is I’ve taken up a potting soil That is designed for containers now filled this with soil up to within about an inch here. The top ground. There’s a little bit of moisture in the soil because it’s not dry. It’s powder dry. You want to make sure you add moisture and that’s just a matter of selecting some of these wonderful succulents. Oh, there’s so many to choose from. We’re gonna use three today. I’m going to use a sedum and that’s going to be the center point and what I’m gonna do is I’m going to tear into the roots here a little bit and break it out. Just like that, what I love? Is this beautiful grey foliage with just touches of red? You can see that. Has this beautiful burgundy striping looks like a leopard print now. I’m going to add a few of these A shove areas or hens and chicks gently work the soil in around them. We’ve got a few of the smaller ones over here. Just a slight variation of the way these leaves form, which makes it interesting. Pull another one right in here now. If you’ll notice we’ve got a few of them, that have sort of some pink coloration to them, so I’m going to add those because that carries out this kind of burgundy theme that we have going here. These are as easy to grow as just popping them in the container, pulling a little soil around them. You’re gonna add just a few here in the back and one more of these beautiful, gray colored ones, and I think we’re set now that I have all my plants in place. It’s a matter of top dressing. If you will the soil, I don’t like to see the bare soil, so I use gravel. Now you can use any kind of mulch. You like in this case? Using this sort of caramel colored gravel and you may break a few limbs off as you go along. But if you do, that’s okay, because what’s fantastic about these succulents is often you’ll see a little baby plant emerge right at the point where it breaks off, so you can stick that in the soil. He’ll get another succulent. That’s just a matter of cleaning up this beautiful container and finding it home for it. What I love about this particular container is the color resonates and harmonizes so well with this selection of succulents and for them to flourish, they prefer full Sun or at least half day Sun, when it comes to watering. You don’t need much water at all, very little care, so you can go on that trip and not worry about your babies. . So let’s create a little succulent arrangement that can also double as a planter because our succulents have been cut off and we’re going to use them in this. I’ve placed some wet flower foam down inside. They’ll actually be able to route into this planter right into the foam, and then we can add different accents that go with them. We’ll start by preparing them so on the back. You see that these have been cut off? We have any dead or bad Looking leaves. We’ll peel those off, and then I’m just gonna use a skewer and I’m gonna insert it right into the center of that succulent. It’ll act like a stem when we arranged in here. So we’ll do that with all these. So now we’ll use those just like we would flowers in our arrangement. We have our soaked foam. I’m gonna bevel the edge of the phone just to make it more round for the container, so I’m cutting off the edge. Then we’ll just use some fresh moss and lay it over the top, so that conceals our water supply down inside. I’m going to add my accent flowers first and we’ll add these as topping at the end, so I have a couple of ornamental kale. Although we might think of them as being a summer type plant in the colder temperatures, you’ll notice that Kale and even our succulents have a more intense color. Add a few of the green trick. Dianthus almost looks like fresh moss growing in a little bundle, so this provides our base and now we’ll add our succulents, trim the stick, and then we can stick that. Stick down into the foam and Nestle right in place. Bring some over to the edge. That stick allows us to place them exactly where we want them to go. grouping two together really gives us great impact with that color so sometimes. I’ll keep those light colors together. I also like the opportunity of layering them, so we’ll put this one in close together, so they’re almost stacking on top of each other. It’s the same way you might see them out. In a planter outside, these are scabiosa pods and they’ll dry wonderfully, so we’ll just use those as a little textural accent. The greatest part about this is the textures that we have combined together and our little succulents are going to send down their little roots and root right in here. We can replace other pieces and we’re going to have something that’ll last the entire season. . Hey, look at these succulents aren’t. They adorable. I just love these little guys. How about a way to display them as a wall hanging ? This is a great little plant to have around. If you think you can’t grow house plants, you got to try a jade plant. Jade is actually a succulent You can tell by these really thick leaves that it has really beautiful, glossy leaves. It’s one of the great characteristics of this plant now. One of the things that’s important to recognize about. Jade is that you can overwater it very easily. You see, you only want to water it in the growing season about every ten to twenty days, and and you just want to make sure that the soil is moistened and you don’t want it to sit in water, what? I’ve noticed here with mine. As you can see that, it’s already producing some of these little aerial roots. You can see here, they’re coming out. That tells me that I could actually start some new jade plants and it’s really easy to propagate. These let me show you how so? I’m going to take one part, just potting soil. This has a lot of houmous in it, mainly in the form of Peat Moss and the white in. This is perlite, and it’s there to help with really good drainage. And I’m gonna mix this to one part sand, okay. I’m gonna get that all worked in together. The sand is slightly moist, so it’s adding some moisture to the potting soil. Now get all this blended together. I’ve got really what I want. You can see that that’s very sandy soil. There’s no chance of these little young plants sitting in too much water as long as I don’t keep the saucer filled with water. All right, so then I’m gonna take this container. I’m just gonna fill it with some of this sandy soil like this, and then I’m going to step over here and clip off a piece of this jade plant and I’m going to take it right above a leaf node or a segment where the leaves come out and you’ll notice on the plant that the leaves are one across from each other, So I’m just cutting it just above that point, so I’ve got this stem and I’m just gonna take off These little side. Leaves like this is what I want is a long piece of stem, just like that. You can see those little roots coming off the end, really, then all I have to do is take it, push my finger in the soil and push that stem all the way in like and get it all nestled in and then. I’m just gonna add just a little bit of water, so I can get off to a good start, and that’s really all there is to it, and it’ll be amazing How fast this will grow. I can also take these leaves and fill up these little containers like this. These little tiny pots, which I think are really cute and I can take these leaves and actually place Those leaves in the soil like that, and you’ll get a tiny little plant that will emerge from the base of the leaf. This plant is so cool and I recommend. If you don’t have one, you get one. It’s going to become just almost a household pet. Look at these succulents inside this terrarium. All you really need are a few basic ingredients. You can come up with your own little garden. When you’re making terrariums, you can make them really any size. You want this one’s very simple you can see. I have a layer of gravel on the bottom, some soil here and the plant’s just a couple of them in the top of this. Let me just show you. How easy it is! It’s gonna take some gravel. It’s about three inches of gravel in the base of a glass bowl and then take a soil that specifically blended for succulents. You’ll find that this soil is very loose and forest, which is exactly what you want. If you want to grow beautiful cacti, so in goes the cactus, just going to break up the soil, just a little bit, place it in the center and then. I’m gonna add a few smaller succulents around the base of it. These gardens can go for weeks. Maybe a month. Maybe two months without any water at all now. I’m gonna finish up this little Gardens by adding one more plant here and give it just a splash of water again. It doesn’t take much water at all, but just want them to settle into their new home. I’m always looking for interesting ways to use plants and an interesting way to use a plant often starts with an interesting plant. What we have here is a collection of echeverrias and semper. V verbs, which are kind of in the succulent family. They’re very easy to grow. They require very little water, but what we’re going to do with them is create a bouquet. You’re not gonna go out and cut these in the garden like you might a bouquet of roses this idea. I know is a little bit of a mind stretch, but if you wanted to do a really funky sort of Bridals made bouquet. This is the ticket because these plants I think are so cool. You want to start with a plant like this and just take the soil off of it gently? You just want to put it in the water like this. Tease the soil away. Just like that. Once the soil has been removed, You’re ready to get this new and unusual idea up and going. Alright, so there’s the plant. Here’s one that’s been completely washed off and dry. You want to take a heavy gauge of wire and what you’ll do is you’ll take and stick the wire through. Not the roots here, but the sort of base of the plant in this area here, so lets. Just watch this, oh! I’m gonna push it through here that I’ve got about an inch and a half of wire in this case and I’m gonna bend it down like this. Go now what I’m going to do is take just some floral tape, and I’m gonna start the floral tape at the top right up against the base of the plant, and I’m just going to roll it around like this where it overlaps ever so slightly and comes down the stem. This will actually protect the little roots. It’ll keep the plant from drying out and actually after the big day. If it’s a wedding after you’re finished with the arrangement or bouquet, you can disassemble this and replant these little plants. Alright, so there you go so as you can see. I’ve already been underway with getting lots of these flower stems prepared. So now it’s just a matter of arranging the bouquet. I’m gonna start with this large one, and I’m just going to begin to group them and cluster them together very tightly like this. You can see it’s fairly even all the way around, and now all I would do is take the wire stems and Bend them up to get the desired length of the stem of the bouquet and then go back to the floral tape and just bind all of them together with a floral tape. Once you have the floral tape all the way down, you just simply take ribbon and wrap it around the stem of this as you would with a floral bouquet, and then you could add flowers to this If you like. Just a unique way to use these marvelous and interesting Plants you you?