Colorful Succulent Driftwood Planter! Succulent Rainbow!

Hey, what's up, gardening friends? Jeff here, Tropical Plant Party. How's everybody doing? I hope you're good. I'm great. And today, we're making a little cactus garden. Now, I picked this guy up off, well, I didn't pick it up, I ordered it. This is from Amazon. It's resin. It does look pretty fake, but I don't really care. I still like it. It's an interesting shape. Yep. And I wanna fill it up and, you know, use some of my succulents in here. Probably a lot of them, actually. So, let's go over to the succulent shelf and pick some stuff out. There's a fair amount of stuff to choose from over here. Ah, there we go. Wide assortment of options here. Obviously, these aren't all going to fit. I really like this fun little rainbow that's going on right there. I like these echeverias, some cactus. Gonna need some things for height and all different types of things. But before I get going on this, I need to mix up some soil. And this is really just gonna be the same kind of soil I always mix up. This is just the Miracle-Gro Pudding Mix to which I add a handful of orchid bark, a drizzle of lava stone, and then a drizzle of tomato fertilizer. Just a smidge, not very much. And I just mix it together and I'm ready to go. Now, if I had any coarse sand, I would put that in here as well as some perlite, but I'm fresh out. And this really should be okay. I prefer to use perlite and coarse sand over the orchid bark, but hey, you know, sometimes you just gotta work with what you got. Because really, I just wanna make sure it's not holding together so I know it's not gonna hold in too much moisture. The thing with the orchid bark is it will break down over time and could make the soil a little bit soggy or maybe a little bit too nutrient-rich. But this is very temporary because once the nurseries start filling up with Sempervivums, I'm probably gonna pop these guys out, put them into a different thing. And I rotate my plants a lot. It's just kind of the way it goes. Things are always changing. So, just gonna go ahead and fill in these pockets. Just a little base level. And get started. All right, now it's time to pick out what to put in here. And I'm kind of having one of those moments where it's like when you go to the grocery store and you're hungry and you get home and you're like, why did I buy all this food? This is so much. It's not gonna fit in here. But the first thing I like to figure out is what I wanna do for the height. So, I don't actually see myself using the cactus. I think that it's just too big for this. But there is an aloe back here. This is the Zanzibar aloe. I'm gonna try and show you the labels on the pots because that way I don't have to type it out. So, you can pause it if you need to know what this is. Yeah, these have some nice height to them. And they're pretty tough and easy to grow. I'm thinking this might be a good option for this back corner. I want your eye to be drawn from here all the way to the back. Lots of little things going on. And I'd like to get one of these guys in here because they're flowering and that's pretty. This is the dwarf ox tongue. It's a Gasteria lilliputana. Really pretty flowers on there. Some nice healthy looking roots too. All right, so we want the Gasteria here, over here, maybe even tucked in back there. Yeah, I think that's a good spot. I really kind of want to put it here, but I also really want to use a lot of these sedums in here. And if I don't have something else in here, it's just gonna be like a hedge of sedums. I need something that'll break it up. So, that's a good spot for that. Yeah, I really like these Echeverias, but those are way too big. I mean, that's gonna overpower the entire thing. Oh, but it looks so cool though. This variety is called Cheviana, Chevy, I don't know. I could maybe squeeze that in right there, but that'd really be a tight fit. And I feel like it'd be so big that it would take away from all the angles of the fake wood. You know, I'm actually thinking I may go ahead and just fill up the rest with these various sedums. And this is actually an Echeveria, Echeveria multicollis. Little bit rough around the edges, but it's the nicest one they had at the store. I'm gonna start plugging these in and just kind of go with it. Hey, what do we think? I absolutely love it. So much color and diversity. I mean, well, diversity is kind of like, eh, because it's mostly sedum type plants. Actually, I don't know if there even is any sedum in here. No, this is sedum. But I would say it's as close as I'm going to get to a succulent rainbow, at least with the plants that I have available right now. Absolutely awesome, I love this. So much color. And yes, it is overcrowded. Like I said, I'll be taking this apart in a few weeks. Well, not a few weeks, probably in a few months and doing something different with this because I'll probably be keeping this outside. So I'm gonna want hardy succulents in it. And then I'll move these onto a different planter, which I already have planned out, which is why I even have these succulents. But I wanted to do something with them for the time being. So here it is. I know I already told you, this is the Zanzibar Aloe, Aloe Zanzibar. And then back here, we have the Echeveria multicollis, the Ox Tongue up front, or Dwarf Ox Tongue, Dwarf Ox Tongue, which is the Gasteria Lilliputana, I believe. And right here, we have Grapidiveria Blue Pearl, which I accidentally smudged some of their powder off. Another Grapidiveria Blue Pearl back here. And these lovely yellow guys, that is Sedum Adolphi, or the Golden Sedum. These in the front are a Grapidisedum variegans, and I believe the variety is Alpenoglow. And in the front here, here, here, and here, those are the Sedum Spathilifolium Perperium Carnia, is the variety. That one is a mouthful. As far as care is concerned, none of these are hardy succulents. So these will be house plants, and then I'll move them outside to a dry, sunny location when the weather is right. Still a little bit cool for that where I am. I'll be making sure they get about, I'd say five to seven hours of sunlight. And in the afternoon, I'm going to want that light to be filtered because on my patio, the pavement's pretty dark, and I do think these might scorch. And as you've already seen, I'll be watering them with this syringe. It's actually called a catheter syringe. Very, very, very sparingly, I will not be watering these very often at all. Kind of seems to be the trick with succulents is really just don't water them very much. They'll do much better for you. All right, but that's gonna do it. A fun little toss together. Always fun doing some gardening, getting things mixed up and looking pretty. Pretty and rainbowy, that is. Don't forget to leave a thumbs up on the video. It helps a lot and I really appreciate it. Subscribe as well. I upload multiple times a week. I'll put all my social media stuff down there in the roots of the video, in the description. Follow me, I'll follow you back. We can look at each other's pictures and have fun, nerdy plant time together. And just comment down below for the heck of it because I love talking to y'all. All right, and as always, everybody, keep on growing. Bye-bye.