My Echeveria is Growing Way Too Tall!
I bought these two Echeverias in December last year for my tabletop garden – Merry Christmas. In these three months, the stems of these Echeverias have kept stretching longer and longer, and now, they are like a Yao Ming of their genus.
Echeverias need bright light. And obviously, I didn’t give my poor Echeverias enough light, as the stems of the plants kept growing longer and longer in the direction of the light.
This photo of my tabletop garden – Kung Hei Fat Choi is taken in early February. After being deprived of light for over a month, the stems of my Echeverias started to grow longer. Yet, as ignorant as I was, I thought I might have fed my Echeverias too well with the liquid plant food that I had just bought for my cacti and succulents.
This is how my Echeverias looked like in my tabletop garden – Merry Christmas. I bought these Echeverias and took this photo in the end of December last year.
After this experience, I have learned my lesson – light is one of the most important factors, if not the most imporant one, in the care of houseplants. Of course, water, humidity, nutrients, space, temperature and such, affect the health of our houseplants as well. Yet, it is usually much easier for us to modify these factors than the placement of the windows, skylights, doors, balcony and such. Hence, the among of light a plant can recieve in the indoor environment is one of the greatest limiting factors when we select our indoor houseplants.
No wonder most indoor houseplant selection guides categorize indoor plants by light requirement. Okay, I better start listening…
Hello Sandy,
It is very nice to read your fabulous gardening blog. I am a graduate student working for a literacy program, at University of Delaware, USA. I am preparing for summer camp picture cards for young preschool kids right now. I find some pictures from your website are very interesting and can be used for word teaching , but I am wondering whether the pictures are copyright protected and can be used like this. Could you give me some clues about this? Thanks. I left my email address here.
Hi YZ,
I am happy to know that my blog can be helpful to you in some way. All the photos with the Gardening on Cloud 9 watermark are my photos. Feel free to use them. It’s my pleasure to share them with you and those preschool kids
Cheers.
i like the yao ming Echeverias!
If you give it abundant light for 2 mths and no light another 2 months, what will it look like?
Haha. If you give an Echeveria lots of light for 2 months, it will probably thrive beautifully. Then, if you don’t give it enough light for another 2 months, it will probably die or have long stem like mine. So yes, if you want a Yao Ming Echeveria, you can try to give it little light. We can actually do a lot with the plants by manipulating the light source. In fact, this is how people grow lucky bamboo that spiral or twist
I had one like this , I got it on a “mostly dead ” plant rack at a hardware store. I brought it back to full health , but all of its offspring did the same thing no matter how light was applied.
Really? Even when the Echeverias are put under full sun?