Artisan's Blog

Early in 2022 I was shopping for trees for my backyard at a local garden store. While perusing the succulent section I saw an aloe plant with a gnarly flower gall. These galls, sometimes called Aloe cancer are caused by Aceria aloinis, more commonly known as aloe mite. These mites belong to the Eriophyid family of mites. I've seen mealie bugs, scale, spider mites but I have never seen an aloe mite. Since they are now capable of infecting Haworthia plants, which I grow, I felt I should see what they look like for myself. I returned to the garden center the following...

We are happy to offer some of our favorite plants we propagated using tissue culture. I wanted to provide some background to answer questions about the process people might have: What is tissue culture? A method to propagate plants.  How did you learn Plant Tissue Culture? I have a background in genetics and plant biology and previous work experience with plant TC. I was lucky to have as mentors two people who are pioneers in the field of plant TC.   How does it work? Plant tissue containing merisitems (for more information about meristems see my previous blog) is sterilized to kill bacteria and fungi....

This column is for the novice growers interested in dipping their toes in the deep fascinating ocean that is Haworthia. By haworthia, I am referring to the "window" haworthia.  For many years the term Haworthia was associated with common hard leaved haworthia, like H. attenuata "Zebra plant". Those plants are now considered to be their own genus "Haworthiopsis," and are no longer considered haworthia (for more, see my previous blog "What is and what isn't a Haworthia"). The "window" haworthia are slower and more challenging than their Haworthiopsis cousins.  "Are Haworthia difficult to grow?" I get asked this question a lot. The answer I...

As a child I remember loving this weird old 1950s science fiction movie "Fiend Without a Face". It was about oval shaped creatures that attached themselves to peoples' necks and sucked out their life force. Mealybugs are the fiends without a face of plants. They suck out the plant's life force. In this blog post I will try and demystify these fiends without faces and give people information for dealing with this annoying pest.  Mealybugs 101 What exactly are Mealybugs? Mealybugs, also called "mealies" for short, are insects belonging to the family Pseudococcidae. They feed on plant juices. They have a straw-like mouth-part...