A repot I’d done carelessly, rushed because I was trying to fit it into a narrow window before guests arrived, left a rare Astrophytum with visibly damaged roots and a noticeable list to one side within days. I’d been too hasty pulling it from its old pot, too rough settling it into the new soil, … Read more
I spent nearly a month treating a spotting problem on one of my Echeverias with a fungicide that did essentially nothing, watching the dark, water-soaked lesions continue spreading despite consistent, correctly applied treatment. It wasn’t until I finally asked in a collector forum, posting close-up photos, that someone pointed out the spots had the wrong … Read more
I introduced a fungal infection into a healthy, established Conophytum using the exact same blade I’d used minutes earlier to trim a rotting root off a completely different plant. At the time, it genuinely didn’t occur to me that a quick wipe on my jeans counted as adequate cleaning between cuts. Within about two weeks, … Read more
A collector friend once sent me a panicked message with photos of small, raised, blister-like bumps that had appeared almost overnight on the leaves of her Echeveria, convinced she was looking at some kind of aggressive fungal infection or pest damage she’d never encountered before. The bumps looked genuinely alarming, slightly translucent, faintly discolored, scattered … Read more
I lost most of an Echeveria’s fresh growth before I even realized spider mites were the cause. What I actually noticed first was a faint, dusty discoloration on the newer leaves, subtle enough that I initially dismissed it as normal mineral buildup from tap water, the kind of thing I’d seen plenty of times before … Read more
I once took a batch of cuttings from a healthy, established collection right at the peak of summer heat, feeling confident because the parent plants themselves looked perfectly fine in those conditions. Every single cutting failed, not dramatically, just a slow, quiet shriveling over several weeks with no rooting whatsoever. At the time I assumed … Read more
I spent an embarrassingly long time propagating a clustering Haworthia the hard way, taking individual leaf cuttings from a plant that was practically begging to be divided instead. The offsets were already there, already rooted into the same root mass as the parent, already essentially independent plants sharing a pot. Instead of simply separating them, … Read more
I once watched a beautifully variegated Echeveria I’d been growing for over a year slowly revert, one leaf at a time, back to plain green, as if the plant were quietly erasing the exact trait I’d paid a premium for. My first instinct was that I’d done something wrong, too much fertilizer, wrong light, some … Read more
I once received a small envelope of Lithops seeds from a grower overseas, seeds I’d been genuinely excited about for weeks, only to have essentially none of them germinate. At the time I assumed the batch itself had been poor quality, maybe an unsuccessful pollination or seeds harvested too early. It wasn’t until a later … Read more
The first time I attempted a micro-cutting on a genuinely slow-growing Haworthia, I approached it exactly the way I’d approach propagating a fast, forgiving Echeveria, take a decent-sized leaf, let it callus, set it on soil, wait. Nothing happened for months. Not rot, not growth, just a slowly desiccating leaf that eventually shriveled into nothing … Read more