Tucked in a little triangle of ground between the house and a little path of pavers I made to get to the hose spigot, I found some ice plants, Delosperma, blooming the other day.
I know I did not buy these but recall getting some as trial plants.
I did a quick search through my email and I found that in 2016, I indeed got some Delosperma to trial, but I kind of think I planted those in the back garden somewhere. If this one in the picture is one of those, then it is a Jewel of Desert® ice plant.
However, most of those Jewel of Desert® ice plants have a white center and mine do not.
So, it might be a variety called ‘Gold Nugget’, which is maybe a plant I got when I was asked to evaluate just the packaging for some trial plants. I searched my email for info on that and found nothing. (I love that kind of plant trialing, by the way. It carries with it no guilt for not talking about the plants. I get a shipment of plants, take pictures of the boxes and the contents of the boxes, then send those in an email with a descripition of how easy or difficult it was to unbox everything.)
I also love trialing actual plants and always felt bad when I didn’t respond back with a blog post, an online review, or some other indication that I got the plant and at least tried to grow it.
Clearly, hoping to find something in email about a trial plant years later is not a good system for keeping track of them. Nor is keeping tags, as evidenced by a series of YouTube videos I did last spring showing me sorting through decades’ worth of old plant tags and seed packets.
So this spring I came up with a new system. Now I’m using a Trello board to keep track of each and every trial plant and seed I get so I can remember what I did with it and where I wrote about it. I recorded and uploaded a YouTube video to show how I’m doing that.
And if you are a gardener who doesn’t get trial plants and just wants a better way to keep track of your garden, then you might like this other YouTube video I did about using Trello for that. (By the way, I have not even come close to the level of video views and channel subscribers needed to qualify for making money from YouTube videos, yet YouTube seems to have no problems adding ads to the beginning of some of those videos. Hmmm…)
Now, here’s what I have to say about ice plants, to remove that guilt from not writing about them before because they are a lovely little flower. What a nice surprise to see this one blooming in a that little wedge of ground where I’ve planted some other succulents and have a few allium seedlings coming up, and is that a crocus leaf? Yes, I believe it is.
The ice plant flowers open and close with the sun. Yesterday was rainy, then overcast, and they stayed tightly closed all day. This morning, the sun is shining and they are wide open again. For the right spot, they are a pretty little flower that does well with very little attention. Get some for your garden! Tell them Carol recommended you do so.
(Update. Just got back from Court’s Yard and Greenhouse and they have several different varieties of Jewel of Desert® ice plant in stock. They’ll go quick when people see those blooms!)
I use Evernote to keep track of all my plants. Each garden bed has its own notebook, and there is a note for each plant. I often grab a web page about the plant to start the note off, then add the exact date I planted it and the location within the bed. I tag the note with the plant’s genus and common names, the year acquired, the source, and yes, if it’s a sample plant I tag it with that, too. This system works great as long as I take the time to do the data entry. Evernote works with my phone as well as my computer, and if I had a tablet it would work with that, too. I also have notebooks for Plants I Want and Plants I’ve Killed.
thank you very much. So good to hear from a gardening person rather than commercial stes. I’m a part time gardener who is beginning to realize that I cant remember it all!