I get the cold hardiness for semps. However, I have not found any info on very specific heat tolerances/intolerances for semps. I winter in Scottsdale AZ and am trying to figure out if I can leave my semps in the shade with a watering system. I am doing that with many of my echeverias but cant find specific info on heat (100+) with semps.

I have a home in Scottsdale. Our daughter is living in it with her family. I gave her a lot of semps and we kept them in the shade with a drip system. Every one of them died. If I lived there I'd try again, but they have a hard time during the bad summer heat.

I am no help on this topic.
I do think that to much water would be death to sempervivum in that type of heat. I would think early morning sun and shade the rest of the day might be helpful. Soil that hold moisture would steam cook them during the day. The potting mix would have to be very fast draining.

@webesemps Bev, what do you think?

Thanks for the responses. I sent a tree mail to Bev and am hoping for a response from her. If I need to I will dig dig up my new purchases and take them back to South Dakota and then bring them back to AZ. The deer enjoy my semps as much as I do.

I think deer are more of a problem in dry areas like AZ than they are here. The deer here might nibble on some leaves, but that's about it.
Good luck in finding a way to make it work Royaune. And I want to send you a big to NGA. So glad you found your way here.

valleylynn said:I am no help on this topic.
I do think that to much water would be death to sempervivum in that type of heat. I would think early morning sun and shade the rest of the day might be helpful. Soil that hold moisture would steam cook them during the day. The potting mix would have to be very fast draining.

Extreme heat and extreme full sun is not suitable for sempervivum should you want ideal looking sempervivum.
I believe there is too much emphasis on how hardy sempervivum are and quite frankly that is in my experience a serious exaggeration, just because the plant does not die the next day does not mean it will not die eventually or that it will look ideal.

As for adding lots of water while there is ton of heat and lots of full sun, in my experience it only destroys roots slowly and it indeed steam cooks the plant.

From what I have experienced with Semps thru the years, and having killed a lot of them, my highest time of dead Semps occurs when we start entering our long dry season and the increasing temps which peaks at a very dry 100F and higher in summer. But outdoors is still the best area for them, so I do not bring them indoors, just position them in whichever part shady area I can have them in. Our dry season here is a long 6 to 7 months zero rain, so our humidity is equally dreadful, often 30% to 0% depending on the prevailing temps and wind conditions.

They do so well during Fall to mid Spring here, when we get intermittent rains and cooler air around. But our very dry heat is just too much, even in shade...it will be hit and miss which ones will endure. So oftentimes, my Semps will bloom in stress or get dry roasted, and then bye bye.

Typically at 90F, it starts already to shut down like most of my succulents do here. The higher the temps goes, no amount of watering will help cool them down, so they attempt to close their rosettes to preserve whatever moisture they still have and wait it out till the day cools down again at night. It is good if the intense heat is just a few hours a day, but in summer we get heat waves that may go a week or so, so it is do or die time with any succulent I have. Very few truly enjoy intense heat, and the Semps are not one of them. I see cacti nurseries around here position them in shade or they move them under a spot where they have installed a protective white overhang to protect the plants from being dry roasted.

With the few remaining Semps I still have, they are protected under the canopy of the city trees, or sometimes shadowed by our house, just depends where the sun is at the time of the day. I try to water them early in the morning, so it has enough time to absorb the water and have something to help it for the rest of the day. When it has been over 3 months already of very dry and hot weather, the remaining semps may just continue being tightly shut, not yet dead though. I still water them, got to help the roots. But always early in the day. They patiently wait it out till the cooler conditions of late Fall returns.

My location is more inland, so we always get a long duration of thermal dry heat here.

Great information Tarev, I forgot that you do have a few semps. Which ones do you have that have survived?

I think these are the arachnoideums.

That looks amazing. You sure are great at figuring out how to give a plant what it needs. Awesome.

I'm just getting started with Sempervivum (thanks Lynn!). Our winters are often mild compared to other places although we do occasionally (once a year maybe) get a thin layer of snow. But not often. Our summers are long. June, July, & August can get in the 90's-up to 105. We do usually have high humidity.

For right now, I've potted up all the offsets I got from @ValleyLynn. I had planned to leave them outside under some large shade trees but the puppy someone dumped here will not leave my plants alone. As a matter of fact, 2 are missing from being pulled up & chewed on so bad I couldn't save them. My older dogs have never touched any of my plants & we've pretty well got the cat (also a dump) trained to leave them alone. But this puppy, man!!!

Until speaking with Lynn, I thought they were really fragile & needed to be treated as house plants.

The area I'm thinking about making beds for them is partially shady but does get some sun. Right now I'm trying to get it mowed down so it stops looking like the pasture it once was. For weeks it would rain for a few days & about the time it would be dry enough to mow, it would rain again. So the grass is literally knee high. Haven't found anyone to work on the riding mower yet so I'm doing it with a push mower, which takes time. I will be trimming up those trees a bit & eradicating the poison ivy or Virginia creeper or both. The fallen tree may just stay there & a bed made around it because I can't move it.
This is before I mowed. To the left is a spot where wild violet is growing so I will dig as much up & replant as I can. Excuse the mess, this area seems to be where we've put crap. This is also the area the school bus used to back up. We have a circle drive & the county widened it but the bus driver didn't like making that turn so she would come in & back up into this spot & then back out the driveway. This was also where my husband parked his bread truck. We are the last house on the Arkansas side of the state line, & since we had the circle driveway, the county came in, widened the driveway, dropped some gravel, & graded it for the school bus. So there's rocks everywhere now that there's nothing heavy keeping it packed down & in place.


As you can see, mowing around them is next to impossible.


Once it's been mowed


I like how this is (screenshot from YouTube) with the island beds made of rock. We actually have that rock as well as iron ore so I plan to use those since they're free & then incorporate cinder blocks similar to what Lynn has done I think. Is this doable you think?

What a beautiful place you have. Never been to Arkansas.

Oh WOW!!!
Kathy you have such a beautiful piece of property, like a blank slate. What a difference a mowing makes.
I love the idea of making a planter around the old downed tree. What an interesting feature that could be.

Double WOW!!!
On the photos of a simulated river bed. Makes me think of Tim's river bed. Just love that. And bonus is that you already have most of the material to do that.

Keep us posted how your project goes!