A Full Breakdown of the Keywords Every Succulent Grower Must Know

Text

Images and text: Xiaoqian

There seem to be a few words that always hover around succulent growers, including:

one

"Diligent and eager to learn": looking up information to learn the best succulent-growing methods, checking the weather to shade them, shade-cloth them, water them, bringing the pots indoors when it turns cold or the wind picks up, twisting into awkward poses to photograph your precious succulents, scratching your head bald writing articles, and studying hand-painted pot techniques.

two

"Treating money like dirt": you see a succulent you fancy - expensive? Grit your teeth, stamp your foot, buy it! Having bought an expensive succulent, of course you have to give it a luxury home so the little things can look beautiful; to grow them well you have to give them extra nutrients, and buy all kinds of medicine when they get sick; you may even build a sunroom or a garden for your precious succulents; plenty of people have even ended up as greenhouse owners for the sake of succulents.

three

"Penny-pinching": the gritty soil used by a succulent that died last time - just sun it, disinfect it, and it can be used again, right? Why buy soil and grit? Go up the hill, into the vegetable plot, pan the river sand, and dig it up yourself - it works just the same, doesn't it? The succulents are growing well, so pull off some leaves - that can save quite a bit of money; you can't keep affording expensive ones, so better to buy more of the common ones, buy ones under 10 yuan, buy ones under 5 yuan, ask the seller for a couple of extra freebies; rummage through the rubbish heap looking for anything usable for planting succulents; when the season changes, buy clothes and bags? nonono! Save the money to buy succulents.

There are many more words that can describe succulent growers, but I won't list them all here.

Another thing I love to fuss over is repotting my succulents. Though it's called repotting, it isn't simply about changing pots because a succulent has grown bigger or gotten sick. When you buy a succulent, thinking it will grow bigger before long, you give it a big, big, big mansion (a big pot); later you find you overestimated its growth rate - half a year, a whole year with no change at all, or it even grows smaller and smaller, so you have no choice but to dig it out and honestly move it into a small pot; next time you buy a succulent, you learn your lesson and plant it in a small pot, but before long it grows bigger and fills the pot, and there's nothing for it but to dig it out and move it to a big pot; you plant a succulent, and after a while you buy a nice-looking pot, so you dig it out and repot it again; the succulent gets sick, and once again you have to dig it out and repot it. The temperatures in Guiyang in July and August still aren't suitable for repotting, and having finally endured until September, I have already moved the grown succulents into medium or large pots; moved the ones that hadn't changed for a long time into small pots; moved the ones that had grown taller into tall pots; dug out the sick ones and the ones suspected of being sick, dried their roots, and repotted them; swapped big pots and small pots back and forth, tall pots and short pots back and forth, round pots and square pots back and forth. The succulents are still the same succulents, but who knows how many times the pots have changed. Repot... repot... repot... until I'm dizzy, bleary-eyed, with an aching back and sore waist......

After saying all this, really it all comes from a love of succulents. Because of that love, you keep learning and improving, and you're no longer the clueless beginner you once were; because of that love, even an aching back and sore waist are a joy to bear.

Life is all about ---- fussing!

This article was compiled by the Succulent Boutique Pavilion; copyright belongs to the original author. For some articles the source cannot be traced, and they are marked as coming from the internet. If there is any infringement, please contact us immediately and we will deal with it promptly.