You guys are funny!

I have a lot of semps blooming right now. I think the 90° weather has set them off. Most are all large colonies, so not worried about them.

Bloom stalk on Sanford is such a pretty pinky tan. If it's in bloom can I still take it out?

I have done that with a fully blooming plant before. Sometimes it will work, sometimes not.

Done it.

Mine are blooming like crazy right now too.

Mine too! I'm not as up set this year as I was last year. Last year I lost about 8 varieties to bloom.

I really need to thin and de-bloom out in the beds right now. Work is slowing down, maybe I'll get caught up.

I think it would be helpful to mention their is a sort of relationship to dividing a rosette and blooming out. Many colonies start off with rosettes that are the same age. You might have received, for example, several offsets that were created that same growing season. Take this forward as the colony grows. Two or three seasons later, the original offsets have bloomed and died, but all of their offspring are still growing "in sequence" and can be the same age. Then, you get a growing season where all of the previous offsets bloom without creating offsets. This can lead to the collapse of a colony.

So, what to do about it?

Dividing a rosette the growing season before it will bloom sets the bloom time for the rosettes of the division back a season or two. This creates a line of rosettes with a different sequence from the original one and can help limit colony collapse due to blooming.

Good info. Never thought of that!!

Great strategy to take control...

Here are a couple that I pinched off the top off so it wouldn't bloom out (I know it would probably look better if I actually used a knife rather than my fingers, but...there ya go) can you see the little chicks hiding directly under momma? the photo doesn't show but the ring of chicks is all around the hen!
Dream Catcher

Packardian (this one has 2 chicks hanging off the top, but one looks like its going to bloom out so I may have to redo the pinching thing and see what happens!)

and one that didn't work (just for interest) instead of sending out offsets with chicks, it sent out offsets with more blooms!

Thanks Twit for creating this thread!

You are welcome.

When I need to take a break from bookkeeping and no one has sent me a new T-mail or added to a watched post, I go exploring.

Prowling around just now I found this post (Greg, you got it going again so it moved up on the list) and I'm wondering how June & July post-surgery semps are doing now? Knowing how I had to watch my seedlings, spritzing them a couple of times a day to keep them moist but not soaked, I know that if life happened at the wrong time, these little plants and divisions can easily be lost. But I'm hoping some of you have stunning results to show???

Mother Michaela has started reading up on semps, Jovis and succulents in general (she likes to make sure I don't get too far ahead of her in the garden dept.). And since she's also the one we send out to represent the monastery when we need to register our thoughts/feelings/ etc. on subjects like fracking Upstate NY and finding out about the latest green technologies , it has suddenly all come together with her discovery of green roofs.

I think they are a great idea, but we need to start a bit slowly (we are just having our large barn re-roofed, and I think it's a bit too high up for us to have gone the green roof direction anyway. Even our handyman said we needed to leave that job to professionals). Last week she showed us pamphlets she got from a green-roof contractor in Ithaca, less than 2 hours away. She was wanting to get a quote on their doing the chapel roof. But again, we just had to replace that last year after the hurricanes did their number... These green roofs aren't cheap! (to put it mildly) And we aren't going to be able to propagate enough plants ourselves, even growing them from seed and doing this kind of surgery!

So that's a bit off subject here, but it's the kind of discussion we've been having here and now I need to get back to my books! MR

Haha that's funny MR green roofs are heavy also do thy usually need extra support
The photos of mine are current after surgery

Nice saves Greg. What semp is in the last photo, the one that everything bloomed out?

MR, when you do finally have a green roof ready for planting you could just broadcast seed in the prepared planting medium. It could be done just before snow hits, and maybe another dusting of seed when the snow is gone. Let nature do the work. This should work well for both sempervivum and sedum.
It does take experts to do a roof like you chapel, barn, house, etc. The reason being that structure strength has to be sufficient to hold the extra weight of soil and plants, plus rain. Also have to be sure that it is installed properly so it won't leak and cause damage. But you probably already know these things with the research you and Mother Michaela have been doing.

Good morning twit. How are your blooming semps doing?

Lynn that was "Oh my" the non blooming one is in the background - another amazing semp!!

Isn't it funny how just about all of them are amazing?

I know!! Once you begin to take notice of these plants - they really draw you in!! (well me anyway!)

I don't think you are along Greg.