A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2006 Sempervirium aka Hens & Chicks

A neighbor started my passion for these plants. It is cold zone gardners option of for similar appearance plants grown in zone 9 - 10.

They are alpine plants. I love that when the snow melts there they are colorful and survived under our weather condiions.

I have made wreaths, topiary in a pot for winter interst on the porch. Can you tell how much I love them?

I have a few of them too, and they are the
easist, nicest plants to grow...
and such a neat looking plant...


However, those purple ones are very neat looking..
Mine are all green ones...
Neat!!!

Can you ID the two you showed pic's of, Cinta?

I also like the purple. Very neat looking!

Cinta... I really like the 2 you pictured here - especially the red one on top! I had wanted to make a collection here too, and started buying them last summer, but found that most of them died back after blooming and the chicks were few and far between...

I wanted to ask you... I had always known the spelling of this plant to be semperVIVUM - is your way another version of the same thing?

plants, you are right. It was my late night spelling problem. LOL Thank you for catching that. It is Sempervivum. We want people to have the correct spelling when they start to collect these.

If they are flowering and die it is usually because you have them in the house or you give them too much fertilizers. I have only had blooms in the past 3 years twice. They like very lean soil 50/50 soil gravel. I have most of mine growing in more gravel as much as 75%.

I will look up the purple one and post the name. I brought about 50 the last 2 years. I am trying to collect a all red for a Christmas wreath. This was one I thought would be red but it is as you see a deep purple all summer and fall.

Interesting... I don't mean to be argumentative, really I don't... but mine are grown outdoors and get full day sun and absolutely no fertilizer! The only thing they might get a bit too much of from time to time is water - depending on what kind of summer we are having...

I have just found this page to be quite helpful in describing sempervivums with good identifying pictures at the bottom...
Sempervivums

Especially where it states
I do love these plants, including the tall pink flowering stalks - my only challenge is getting more chicks to form and survive.

Lynne,
What do you do to yours??

Just outta curiousity???

I don't do a darn thing..

Mine do flower, but othe'rs fill in,
so I really haven't lost any?????

What kind of soil do you have yours in????

Been reading up a lot on these and everything I have read says the ones that flower do die. Cinta, do you have a hybrid variety that has been produced not to die after it blooms? If so what kind is that one?

Triss - Cinta said:

which surprises me a bit, because I thought they were supposed to bloom when they reached the mature cycle of their lives and then die.

Here are a few of mine in bloom last summer:

This one was chock full of chicks with one large hen when I bought it. Most pieces bloomed and afterwards I only had 2 small chicks left. As you can see, the hen was sending up a flower stalk, and all the chicks were in bloom as well.


Some smaller chicks in bloom in the bathtub pond garden:


Weezie - the ones in the frog pot are in a soil with lots of peat and perlite in it, the ones in the ground are in clay soil for the most part with some of that soil mixed in.

plant I never think of a discussion about plants as argumentative. I want all the feedback I can get. plants do have a mind of their own.LOL I did say "usually". There is never any absolutes when with plants, So many things factor in....your zone, your soil, your amount of sun. Nobody knows everything. I know I don't know everything. I can only tell you what works for me.

If my semp bloom it dies. But they do not bloom until maturity. They have made many chicks by then so the one that dies makes room for the baby chicks to fill in. It takes my babies at least 3 yrs to bloom and I have a good patch by then.

plants 'n pots, try an experiment. Take one of your semps. Mix some some really bad cheap potting soil and some gravel 50/50. Peat holds water. I have some growing down a brickwall the only soil they get is what ever they can grab on to between the bricks. It took them 4 years to start blooming. I had so many babies I had to put some in the garbage.

I put this one together 3 yrs ago no blooms yet. I filled the pot with some old aquarium gravel and some old soil I had in pots from the summer before.

I will try a clickable pic so they are not so big.

Those look nice in the strawberry pot, Cinta On another page that I am too lazy to look up right now, I said my mamma semp bloomed several times w/o dying. Well she's dying now. After putting up several bloom stalks. Elongating and shriveling up and dying. And grandma semp is dead too. Lot's of babies though so we're OK.

OHHHHHH La La Cinta - that is SOOOOOOO NICE!!!
,
I'll take you up on that experiment - I'm hoping to have a few that wintered over to do it with - seems that most of mine bloom either the same year I buy them, or the following year - I'd love to have soooo many like you, that I'd have to give them away - could never THROW them away though...

By the way, I'm in zone 6 here in NY.
Where abouts are you in Penn? My kids went to sleep-away camp in Honesdale, Penn. for many years.

I do not know where Honesdale is located. I am in Pittsburgh my weather is about the same as yours. I am a zone 6. Sometime I think zone 5 with all the ice we get.

OK, if you PM me this summer I will send you some and you can do some more experimenting. I really think it is the Peat that is holding too much water and they are blooming out.

I did give away as many of the Semps as I could.
But they really grow good with my bad treatment. I never plant them just lay them on top of the lean soil/gravel and they grow. Some produce faster than others.

Another hint once you get them growing good and they bloom. I let the flower dry up and sprinkle it on the soil and I have had the seeds grow some baby Semps. I have know idea what the seeds look like so I just sprinkle the whole thing on the ground in the fall.

I do that with a lot of plants that I don't want too mess getting the seeds out of. Like foxglove. I just toss the dried stems up on the hillside and then they start growing. If I were a more diligent gardener I would be up there dividing them. They are growing in the lines/rows that the stems landed in.

WOW, Cinta! (NO dirt?) (The wheelbarrow itself is no concern... the bottom is barely there! I'll have to reinforce it with chicken wire, to hold anything inside it!)

Succ's in a wheelbarrow are nice, Patty. They shouldn't drown in there. Cinta used a sand/gravel mix. I put mine in my local dirt which is fast draining sand/DG.

Patty, If you decide not to use your wheelbarrel, please save it for me for when I come down cuz I want to do the exact same thing!

Patty you said succulents. succulents can take a little more soil and water than the Semps. The ones I have in the pot with my Semps like to be dry.

Since you will have perfect drainage, mix the soil that I described 50/50 soil/gravel. Just do not use rich soil. The Semps will do great.

Last summer we did not get any rain for weeks. They started looking dry I had to give them some water. You will know when they need a drink. If Semps and Sedum are in good drainage and full sun they can take a watering once a week. You should try some in the area you wanted to try them.

Well now, GAWSH! It looks like I have MORE homework to do... finding out what the difference is between succulents & Semps!

I have both, apparently... all the things that you have in your first pics, & some of what Tina has been posting in her topics. (I suppose I could make it so the under-base material is different under each type of plant, if they require different amounts of moisture.)

Triss, You CAN'T HAVE MY WHEELBARROW! COOL!

Looking VERy forward to the day we get to find a hosue to buy Patty, but I am afraid it is a long way off.

Here's a site with every semp and its relative pictured and for sale. I think I'm going to order a few mote this spring!


http://www.squawmountaingardens.com/

That is where I have brought most of my semps from. I like them. There Sedums for cold climates are also good.

Thanks for the link, Margaret. Very helpful!