Forum home› Problem solving
This Forum will close on Wednesday 27 March, 2024. Please refer to the announcement on the Discussions page for further detail.

Has your greenhouse ever been struck by lightening?

bédébédé Posts: 3,095
edited October 2022 in Problem solving
Just joking.

In many cultures, sempervivums are supposed to protect you from lightening.

For those that over-fertilise their plants, here are some examples of plants that have had zero feed.  Perhaps just a bit from passing birds.


 location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Posts

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    You grow them on your old clay tiled roof … hence the common name ‘Houseleek’. 

    https://www.richardjacksonsgarden.co.uk/five-ways-houseleeks/#:~:text=Five%20ways%20to%20grow%20sempervivums%201.%20Houseleeks%20are,in%20the%20tiles%2C%20slowing%20the%20passage%20of%20water. 

    I used to know several old Suffolk cottages with a clump of Houseleeks  growing on the low catslide roof … not many left now. 

    Green roofs before such things were invented 😉 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • B3B3 Posts: 27,505
    I grow them in broken bits of  terracotta pots
    In London. Keen but lazy.
  • Mrs-B3-Southampton,-HantsMrs-B3-Southampton,-Hants Posts: 732
    I gave my dad a pair of concrete welly boots and mum planted them with houseleeks. I have them now as mum died 11 years ago. All I've ever done is nothing!
    Mind you every time I pass them I think of my parents.
    Southampton 
  • GardenerSuzeGardenerSuze Posts: 5,692
    @Mrs-B3-Southampton,-Hants After my parents passed I found an old galvanised watering can behind their greenhouse. This was the start of a collection. I now have ten collected over the years. If you find one with a rose it probably doubles in value so many have been lost or replaced over the years. My favourite is still the one from behind the greenhouse.
    I have worked as a Gardener for 24 years. My latest garden is a new build garden on heavy clay.
  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    edited October 2022
    I started my gardening life with collecting Sempervivums, perhaps aged 7.  I had a sort of lean-to rockery against a brick outhouse.  Zero cost, they were either given or filched.  

    In the above pic, the big central one was bought, Sioux,  the other two??  There are also two cultivars of Sedum, Casablanca and an unnamed silver one.  They started with no growing medium; they have since accumulated a bit of their own dead tissues, some moss and a little wind-born conifer leaflets. 

    I once worked in Brussels, 24 floors up.  I looked down on many flat roofs which all lit up yellow with stonecrops in the summer.  They appeared to shrug off most weedkillers.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Sign In or Register to comment.