Baby toes ID and care

If you have a succulent plant and need help identifying it, this is the place to post it.
david90531
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Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

I acquired one of my most wanted succulent baby toes today, and it is labeled as Frithia tuberculosa, I'm not sure if that's right because I can't find any info. on that. Could it be a Frithia pulchra? I know they are very similar to Fenestraria aurantiaca, is the only difference their flowers?

What are some general tips to care for these? To repeat my growing conditions they are indoor, good indirect sun throughout the day, with 3-4 hours of direct sun through the window, humidity is usually quite low due to central AC. How often should I water these? The lady said these can take a bit more water than lithops.

Any help is appreciated!

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CactusFanDan
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by CactusFanDan »

The windows are different between Frithia and Fenestraria. Yours is Fenestraria rhopalophylla. F. rhopalophylla ssp. aurantiaca has a yellow flower, so you'll need to see it's flower to nail down the ID.
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iann
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by iann »

Definitely Fenestraria.

Indoors should be quite good for them. They aren't very hardy and although they'll tolerate heat they prefer to grow when it is fairly cool. They are fogbelt plants and appreciate regular water but don't need a lot of it and hate to be standing in wet soil. Low indoor humidity should help because they are quite likely to explode from too much water. Flowers would normally be spring and autumn, or any time in between with good sun, but I don't know what they might do indoors.

Yours looks quite healthy. You can give it a little water when it has settled in but never any rush. If it wrinkles then you can water (or not!), but don't panic and drown it. They are quite capable of shrinking down to almost nothing and then recovering again. Don't over-feed or they will become too fat and overcrowded. The more sun they better, or they stretch and become thin.
--ian
david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

Thanks! That's what I thought too, the frithia has a bit different shaped leaves, and also texture is not as a smooth-looking.
Thanks for all the care instructions Iann, you're the man!
I should probably repot these, but I don't know if they were recently repotted at the garden. Is it okay to repot multiple times in a short period?
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greenknight
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by greenknight »

It should be potted in a free-draining mix without a lot of organic matter - if the potting mix it's in appears to contain a lot of peat, you should repot right away. If the mix it's in looks okay, then there's no rush - they don't seem to mind being tightly potted, and it's easier to avoid overwatering that way.
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david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

Okay, I'm not sure if there's a lot of peat but it does look like a heavier soil than what I usually plant my succulents in.
And I noticed that the soil has been somewhat wet even after 2 days I bought the plant, so I think I should definitely repot it soon
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greenknight
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by greenknight »

Yes - if you have any doubt about the soil, repot.
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david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

Okay. I don't have the ingredients to make a true gritty mix. What can I do with these following items that I managed to have? i.e. what % do I use for each

-Cactus & Succulent soil
-Perlite
-Vermiculite
-Turface
-Horticultural sand
-Fine aquarium gravel (non polished)
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greenknight
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by greenknight »

Hard to say exactly, depends on how much grit is in the c&s soil and how humid it is where you live. With a typical c&s mix, say 1 part c&s to 3 parts grit in a low-humidity area, 1 to 4 in higher-humidity regions.

I'm not fond of perlite or vermiculite, but they both work. Turface is good. Unless the sand is very coarse I would leave it out. Aquarium gravel if it's sharp, not rounded, is ok.
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david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

Thanks! Yeah the cactus and succulent soil is just the standard peat-based ones... So I'm trying to decrease the amount of that in my mix.
So say if I do 30% soil, 20% perlite, 10% vermiculite, 40% turface/aquarium gravel. Does that look like it will work okay?
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by iann »

Not much point mixing perlite and vermiculite. I don't use any vermiculite in my soil since holds too much water, then breaks down too quickly and goes back to being a dense solid. Perlite will do the job for you of maintaining an open soil always containing air, although it is nasty, far too light, and far too white, quickly followed by far too green :lol: Turface is a good replacement for perlite and if you have access to it, or one of the many similar expanded clays, I wouldn't bother with the perlite at all. Note that turface holds somewhat more water than perlite so you can use a lot of it in your mix.

More important than the individual ingredients are the properties of the resulting mix. It needs to retain a certain amount of water, around 30% by volume, and a certain amount of air even after being soaked, around 25% by volume. Ideally it also should be relatively incompressible (or the air will get squashed out leaving a nasty soggy mess), have some ability to retain nutrients (or feeding becomes complex and difficult), and sufficient weight to avoid blowing away without being a solid lump of lead. With experience, this soil consistency becomes easy to identify "when you see it".
--ian
david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

I see, thank you Iann. :)
At this point I'm going to use some just because I still have a bit of perlite and vermiculite with me, plus there's no local distributor for Turface that I can find, so I got my turface from eBay and it was only 1lb. But after I run out of my perlite and vermiculite I will try to stick with Turface. So if I'm understanding this right, all I need is maybe 30% soil and 60% turface and then 10% of gravel? I'm never sure how much gravel I should put in. (Again, I'm not going to use the gritty mix, at least for now.)
david90531
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by david90531 »

Here's what I got at the end
Image

And the repotted plants
Image

Thanks for everyone's help!
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WayneByerly
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by WayneByerly »

I'm not SURE that this particular statement belongs here, but seeing the very attractive top cover in the photo of the plants on the upside down table makes me think of it, so here goes:

I bought a bag of very attractive smallish stones (1/4 or smaller to 1/2 inch) to use as top cover (MUCH like what can be seen in the aforementioned photos). i immediately started replacing the top cover on all of my 60 or so pots. within the month, i had three cacti die ... of slimification ... i scraped the top cover off of 3 or 4 to see what might be wrong.

What appears to have been wrong was that the top cover was not allowing the water in the soil mix to dry out fast enough. Cacti that I had watered WEEKS before were still soggy wet like I had JUST watered them. MY soil mix by the way is mostly mineral ... only about 25% organic.

So i removed all of the top cover from all of my cacti. I have not had ONE die since ... they are all drying out within a week of my having had watered them and I water every 10 to 14 days now (IF they are BONE DRY).

ONE MORE TIME: my cacti were dying of too much water ... because the top cover was not allowing them to dry out between watering ... and who wants to mix (and uglify) their top cover and their dirt by digging in it to find out if it's dry or not.
Make the moral choice & always do what's right. Be a good example. Be part of the solution & make a contribution to society, or be part of the problem & end your life with nothing but regrets. Live a life you can be proud of! Zone 7a
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greenknight
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Re: Baby toes ID and care

Post by greenknight »

I haven't had that problem, but I keep my cacti rather tightly potted. Also, the humidity is low in the summertime here, the plants tend to dry out fast.

You have to be willing to dig down into the mix to check, dig some gravel out first to get to the surface if you don't want to mix it in. I like to use coarser gravel/small rocks, because it's easier to pull some out. I've been doing it so long now that I can usually tell if they're dry by the weight of the pot, but still...
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