My garden has been completely dug up. The plants were placed in clusters in different areas because I needed to separate the different spaces.
Let me explain: the entrance to my medical office is the same entrance as the small nursery I have in my garage. When I am seeing patients and their families wait outside, they have time to pick samples from my plants without me seeing them. That's how, after I went to check on my plants, I realized they had been looted.
I don't blame them, because many people like to steal plants instead of buying them. I came up with a way to keep the two areas separate, even though it means my plants are a little cramped. So now I have a fence separating the plants from the waiting room. No more looting.
I had to cut or prune my opuntia cactus. It is very large; the original idea was that its branches and thorns would protect the wall, where unscrupulous people had entered to look for my plants during the night on many occasions.
This Opuntia pushes very hard against the wall, and the base of the wall moves. I decided to prune it almost 1 meter from the top of the wall. The work was done by the man who works for me in the garden.
I also had to cut back the Euphorbia lactea, as it was growing in such a way that instead of going up towards the wall, it bent over and almost reached a meter towards the concrete path of the garage floor. One branch bent towards the wall, as if it were an arm, and from there it pushed towards the path. We pruned that too. Almost a meter of pruning. It has been reduced in size, but from now on, I will make sure that it only grows upwards and not forwards.
I have been gradually rearranging the layout of the plants, but there are so many that there is not much space left, and they are crowded together. They are happy because they create a microclimate that protects them from each other.
I left the sunscreen mesh roof over some of them and left the rest, where the Sanseviera and fruit plants are, open to the sky.
There are my green fig plants, the pomegranate, and a new guava plant in pots. Soon, it will be time to remove the substrate to apply compost and organic worm fertilizer.
I am changing and transplanting the cacti and succulents, as you may have seen in my other posts. Now they are changing in appearance. I followed a recommendation from my friend Nikv and added a little sifted coarse construction sand to the substrate I prepared for my succulents and cacti. The substrate now has two additional elements, rice husks and fine sand, to achieve greater aeration for the roots.
The ornamental plants are on the roof with shade cloth. They are all grouped together, but I also arranged them according to species: the bromeliads that are flowering, the ferns, the anthuriums, the caladiums, and others. They have moved from one environment to another and enjoyed the change, as there has been no change in their leaves, flowers, or stems.
Soon, these plants will need a change of substrate while they wait to be purchased by their next owners.
I will reopen to the public when I have restored 80% of the nursery. I wanted to show you how my progress in the garden is going, after allowing everything to fall into chaos.
So far these are the small changes in my plant nursery.
Greetings to all the ladies who, like me, share their love for plants.
The photos were taken with the Redmi Note9.
The banners were made with Canva.