Puya

This is why I like to plant borderline hardy plants where they will catch the first of the morning sun (if there is any).

 

Two of the seeds you sent me @longk have germinated.

 

Excellent!
I'm just plucking the courage up to repot the Puya berteroana

 

I wish you guys the best of luck. Perhaps its just as well that I don't have any room.


A couple of years ago I visited Wisley with a group, and saw this Puya chilensis, which was just finishing flowering - its first in 15 years. It had been in the national newspapers dubbed the 'sheep eater'. https://woollydays.wordpress.com/2013/06/22/puya-chilensis-media-fooled-by-sheep-eating-plant/

 

Funnily enough I've just received seeds for that!

 

Today I separated and potted up individually the Puya berteroniana seedlings. Here are two of them............


This seedling has already divided..................

 

I'm getting really impatient. My P.mirabilis has been threatening to bloom for weeks now but the first bit of the flower are finally beginning to emerge from the calyx..............

 

Yay - it's in bloom!

 

A spikey problem! That vile weed Oxalis corniculata has appeared in the pot of Puya coerulea var. violacea..................


I'm not sure how my fingers are going to fare in those spikes on the Puya leaves () but one way or the other the Oxalis has to be got out of there!

 

How about a small paint brush, glyphosate gel and a steady hand.
Otherwise it looks like depot remove the oxalis then repot.

 

I get very similar problems with weeds in pots of spiky plants, I think the only way to do it is a repot.

 

Tweezers? Puyas are lethal!

 

I tried that once and I was shocked to have everything within 4 inches drop dead too.

And it was a teensy paint brush!

 

Have this in virtually every pot ... if it is not Oxalis, it is Jacaranda seedlings, dozens of them, one reason for hainge one cut down!