View allAll Photos Tagged lithops
I just love Lithops plants. They are so wierd yet strangely beautiful. This is one of the three that i grow.
Lithops hookeri - Two new leaf pairs are emerging between the old one, leading to a double-headed plant
Watering a lithops plant is very restricted
to certain period(s) in the annual life cycle!
DO NOT MISS:
Be aware that sites from the southern hemisphere
have a six-month-shift in the description of the
annual lithops growing cycle!
Quarantine:
I spent four weeks gradually poisoning my pots to the ultimate level with everything available, but every time after giving my Lithops a dose, the spider mites emerged again a few days later. They seemed to have a hide-out somewhere in the pot. I realized that I had only one chance to do more against them: It was October now and my Litops won't need any water until next year. So I put all of them out of the soil and washed them thoroughly, whether they had mites crawling on them or not and threw away all of the used soil mixture. I discovered white nests sticked to the roots of the infested plants and brushed them off. After that I soaked all plants with Imidacloprid (Bayer Lizetan spray) and put them onto lids of cookie tins. Now I left them in out-of-soil quarantine for two months, giving them nothing but air and light. I had to wait until the last mite hatched from its possibly remaining egg to die outside. I lost some Lithops which sidewalls were damaged by the mites too much. They could not keep their water and dried. Some others were attacked by fungus because the total absence of soil probably lowered their immunity.
New plants:
I bougt some other species of Lithops at the gardening store to fill up two spare pots that remained empty after the spider mite infestation losses. I cleaned the plants thoroughly before potting them because I do not want to possibly introduce new plant pests. The big round ones are amazing, I never saw them before.
My glow technique works well as a diagnosis tool: All damages to the sidewall can be seen.
New contactless Lithops Glow Technique:
A warm-white Luxeon LED works as a bright point-source that is relay imaged onto the Lithops surface with a couple of lenses, illuminating the transparent plant body through the top window. Now Lithops glow photos can be shot without obstructing parts pressed onto the plants like the head of a flashlight or the stem of a fiberoptic light guide. This photo here is an overlay of sequent individual glow photos, all shot with the same fixed camera position.
I was looking for Brussels Sprouts seedlings, but couldn't find any. I ended up purchasing a few plants from Westbrae Nursery in Berkeley.
I was surprised to see this many Lithops selling for $4.00.
I finally sowed my Lithops seeds.
I drilled holes on the bottom of this plastic storage container (4.5 x 7 inches), then filled it with strained potting soil mixed with crushed perlite and sand.
To make sowing the tiny Lithops seeds easier, I mixed the seeds with sand then sprinkled the mixture on top of the soil.
Hope these all grow.