Washington – Suburban Succulents

Posted on November 17, 2022November 17, 2022 by Adriane — Leave a comment

Get ready for Holiday Plants!

Don't delay on your holiday plant orders. Our baby girl is expected soon and we want to ensure we have you taken care of.

Have a special request for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or any of the holidays in between?

Please contact us right away to get to planning.

Once our baby girl arrives, our time will become much more precious and we’d hate to let you down!

Be sure to check our google maps hours before heading over. We will update there if we are closed unexpectedly.

Plant Shop hours for the remainder of the year:

Friday and Saturday’s 1pm-6pm

Always accepting special orders.

We deliver around Vancouver, and welcome order pick-up’s any day of the week.

Special Hours for November given baby hasn’t arrived:

Thanksgiving 11/24: 9am-2pm

(Grab last minute hostess gifts, floral arrangements, or the last of the succulent pumpkin arrangements!)

Friday 11/25 and Saturday 11/26: 11am-6pm

CLOSED: 12/2 and 12/3 (Expected Arrival Week of Baby)

Pumpkin Succulent Arrangements are available until Thanksgiving

Let our fabulous pumpkin arrangements adorn your table for Thanksgiving or any gathering. Nothing screams Fall more like a pumpkin and nothing screams perfect gift like a fancy pumpkin.

We typically need two days turn around time for any pumpkin orders. Supply of pumpkins are becoming more limited, so please do not delay on ordering if you want one or many to give as gifts or to dress-up your table this year.

Note: We are out of stock on medium-sized pumpkins.

Let Suburban Succulents deck your halls this Christmas!

We’ve got the hook-up on Poinsettia’s- grown locally in Oregon.

Various colors are available this year, however, we will be keeping a limited stock available in the shop and mainly ordering off your special orders.

Don’t know how many you’ll need? Reach out and we’ll help you figure it out.

Orders do not need to be picked up/delivered when placed. Let us know when you’d like your plants and we will accommodate. Most times, clients wait until after Thanksgiving to begin staging their poinsettia’s.

Christmas/Thanksgiving Cactus are available, too!

We also have various-sized wreaths available this year!

Send us an email to order for your home or business! More details are available if desired. 🙂

Contact: adriane@suburbansucculents.com

Holiday gifting with plants and non-living Items.

If you’ll recall last year, we made this great holiday guide for you all. In it we highlighted the spectacular local makers we work with at the shop… Well, we have run out of time to do that this year with our preparing for baby, but not to fear- we will still be a one-stop-shop for your locally-made gifting needs!

We have lots of pots, candles, soaps, plant supplies, and other nifty-gifties available as of now and will be adding more in the next couple weeks. We won’t be restocking on any holiday items, so get them early.

Order last minute with Doordash!

We try our darnedest to keep our Doordash page up to date with new and exciting items that come into the shop, from seasonal floral arrangements to gift sets. We also have a small listing of locally made soaps and candles among other little add-ons.

Christmas items will be added right after Thanksgiving!

Need to send a gift to someone local or want something last minute for a hostess gift? We’ve got you covered. Delivery typically in an hour’s time!

We want to thank everyone in our Community for ALL the support we have received this year, whether it’s through your special orders, Doordash, coming into the shop, plant maintenance clients, or in general providing me support with the new baby. We are grateful to serve our community with your plant-y needs and lend a listening ear when your plants act-up. We are truly thankful for another successful year. Cheers to another great year of plant growing and surviving the ups and downs that inevitably will happen. ~Adriane and Brett

Posted on January 21, 2021January 24, 2021 by Adriane — Leave a comment

our first winter at the new spot!

We’ve had weather in the low & high 40’s… who’s complaining about that?!

So far, there are no complaints about our first winter at the new house. We’ve seen ice, maybe thrice, and no snow, yet! Yeah, it has rained a lot, but I enjoy listening to the sound of it on the roof while I work. Between weather events, we have been able to get the yard and garden more prepared for the coming seasons and have even spotted the Sun a few times! Yipee! On the 5th we received a load of free wood chips to use for the yard and another on the 21st. The yard is now set for mulch for the year. If anyone needs woodchips, bring a shovel, bucket, and a way to get it gone! There is never a dull moment around here.

Our January Garden Update

What we are doing and you might consider too:

Although now is not the time to focus so much on what is growing in the ground, January is the best time to get your plans pulled together for your Spring, Summer, and even Fall gardens. Here’s what we are working through this month:

Create a seed wishlist and go through the backlog of all the seeds to test for viability. We are gathering information as to how much we will use and how much we want to freeze. The public library has many food preservation books that I have been reading through… To sustain one’s family, you need so many bushels of food!

Plan crop rotations and succession plantings. Brett has created a detailed seed catalog that is used as a tool for planning successions and rotations. In some time maybe we will have our schedule fully automated and have simply a reminder of “hey, it’s time to plant x today”.

Pruning back dormant vines, fruit trees, and blueberry bushes. We placed new beds for our berries this year- now for the hard part- choosing a more permanent place to plant them then in a large portable pot.

Layering our dormant beds with compost and other soil amendments (did you see our tips about compost?). We are preparing our beds now to be productive growers in the early spring!

Fill mulched areas around the yard with another layer of mulch. Now is the time to get woodchips, especially in the PNW. We have had two loads of free chips dropped in the last 3 weeks. I want to simply sing the praises of getchipdrop.com and I am thankful for the free mulch, however, there is a slight issue with the contracted companies not following instructions on where to drop the chips in our yard- so simply beware of that.

There are plenty of other things you can do to prepare the garden at this time of year but nothing beats the time spent dreaming about what you will accomplish in the coming year. Let us know what you are adding to your garden to prepare for spring.

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Try this to build your compost!

Is your compost lacking body and decomposition? Our was.

We learned about a rapid-fire composting technique that involves Wood pellets (animal bedding) and Alfalfa pellets (animal feed) found at your local feed store. Soak the pellets overnight in water and add it to your compost tumbler, or pile, or heap, or whatever. The wood pellets act as the brown (carbon) where the alfalfa pellets act as the green (nitrogen) in your compost. The more alfalfa you add the faster your pile will heat up, adjust your ratios of either type of pellets depending on your compost.

The benefit of adding alfalfa to your compost in addition to your grass clippings and even coffee grounds is that alfalfa is also a slow-release fertilizer.

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What’s growing in the garden?

You can find us currently harvesting small amounts of the following:

Parsley
Kale
Broccoli & its leaves- our bunny loves!
Chard
Fava Beans
Carrots
HELLA garlic
Cabbage
Cover crop
Lettuce starts (inside the workshop)

Which brings us to…

It’s time to plan all the plantings!

Suburban Succulents Happenings

The shop is improving! Each week we try to make an upgrade. Last week we changed out the lighting in our storage space. Now that we are more confident with what is required, we are planning to upgrade the lights throughout the entire shop. We still have to get that pesky door changed out… For those of you who have visited the shop, you know the door I am talking about that is just sitting and blocking the back exit, currently. I can’t wait for the light that will come through that window!

We have finally been feeling the low 20s of winter and as a precaution, the greenhouse has been cleared of tender succulents. We are leaving a few select items in the greenhouse to see what happens mainly Haworthias, Gasterias, and some of our mother plants… we have lost a few soldiers so far, but slowly we are learning which plants can handle the outdoor greenhouse life in the PNW. It’s madness and we love it- I often remind myself that “We grow through what we go through” and next year won’t be this same way.

Animal Updates

Butte moved into a shed to keep her dry… She’s not necessarily happier there because she loved to dig in the dirt in the yard, however, she still gets to jump around the yard occasionally and she is staying a lot cleaner!

The Lil chicks are fully integrated with the other hens and are being weaned off their chick feed (we are really just trying to use through the bag that we last bought). It’s a pain in the ass to corral them into their own fenced area to eat their food nowadays. Little fact: Chickens that are laying should not eat medicated chick food as it’s not recommended to eat their eggs because of coccidiosis medication playing some part with the eggs… not medical advice, but we are working through it.

The other day we went to Orchard Feed to get chicken food and other composting pellets; we ended up ordering 7 chicks, four more than we intended to. We love our wide variety of chicken breeds. The unique egg colors & characteristics of each hen are absolutely fascinating! The pleasure that it brings me to watch them waddle around the yard- pure merriment!

Coming Spring 2021

We are excited about many Spring ventures—-

We look forward to offering plant starts, like tomatoes, peppers, & a variety of herbs come springtime! We are teaming with “As Thyme goes by” who we found by digging around Facebook to find out what happened to Thrifty Feed. As Thyme goes by has provided starts to the community for nearly 15 years. We look forward to being a place for fans to get their starts!
Expect lots of spring bulb planters to be available in the coming weeks. We will also have lots of outdoor pots, some empty and others with flowers, to liven up your home!
By June we should be able to offer cage-free, backyard-raised, well-loved chickens eggs! With our flock growing to nearly double the size in just a few weeks, our egg production should be locked into a steady number by May or June. Please let us know if you are interested in getting on our egg list!
Do you want chickens but do not want the work of the chick/pullet phase? Let us know, I’m happy to raise chicks for you and your family.
How about meat birds? If you want fresh chicken, let us know and we will chat about our meat bird plan.

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Posted on October 13, 2018October 13, 2018 by Adriane — Leave a comment

The Greenhouse is DONE!

assembled greenhouse with cover — New Greenhouse built, check!

Well, we did it! We have doubled our covered inventory space in the backyard… all with a giant thanks to Fred Meyer garden center! Brett and I were poking around Freddies on Wednesday night looking for the supplies we would need to build our new greenhouse- as discussed in our last post, check it out– we came across a 6′ x 8′ x 6.5′ temporary greenhouse structure— for 50% off!!! We didn’t buy it that night because it was not the appropriate size to fit in the space we have for it.

So, here is how all this went down- Thursday morning, I was looking out the window into the backyard and saw how well the sun hits the spot NEXT to where our current greenhouse is… I went upstairs and told Brett that maybe we should use that spot for our new greenhouse… We went and measured and voila- it would fit the 6′ x 8′ footprint of the greenhouse we found for cheap…

land space at beginning of project — The starting space- was going to be a fire pit area. Not anymore…

A day went by- Friday morning- I woke up panicked that the greenhouse would not be available at Fred Meyer any longer- 50% off is a great deal- and I’m used to Bay Area where someone else would have scooped that up just to resell it. Needless to say, I did not expect it to last. I called the store to check on the inventory level and see if I would save myself a trip there. I was told that they weren’t selling greenhouses any more and to check back in spring… I told her, “Darn, I was just there two days ago and there were two left! Thanks though…”

This made me feel some type of way… my gut did not trust the answer. So I got in my car- drove to Freddie’s and walked back to the garden center.

There they were! Sitting in the same spot as two days ago and still 50% off. SCORE! I dragged one of the babies home with me.

Shelter Logic Greenhouse — The un-boxing of our new Greenhouse!

On Friday we got serious about the job ahead… We prepped the ground and assembled the structure. To prep the ground, we scraped up the old layer of rock, then made the ground slope a little more even with dirt and sand. After, we spread a new layer of sand, leveled the surface, and covered the area with weed block (landscaping) cloth. We reused the old rocks in the back corner area, then spread 2.5 bags of new rock in the area. Once the pad had been prepped, we began to build the greenhouse.

our sanded area — We used mason sand to create a flatter surface for the new structure.

FYI – We shop at Yard N’ Garden Land in Vancouver, WA for sand, rocks, soil, and ideas. They are a great nursery store with wonderful customer service to boot. We have bought some of our favorite Sedums from this place and love to walk around and look at the seasonal plants and decor they stock.

Lay weed block.
Nail it down!
Rock on.
Make it flat.
Pinkies out, bitches.

Anyway- The hardest part of assembling the greenhouse was driving the stakes into the ground. Note- they did not make it all the way down… I am not even in the slightest concerned about this– there will be plenty of weight on the shelves and within the structure to weigh down the house– and well, time will tell…

Drive those posts
lotsa nuts & bolts

Brett & I are stoked about this greenhouse- it saved us a couple hundred dollars and a lot of time and effort on constructing our own. The cover of this structure alone is 10 times better than what we could have DIY’d.

We haven’t really moved succulents into the greenhouse as I was really tired after working in the sun. We did move some of our Jade collection in to see how they take to the structure. IMO, Jade is our hardiest plant and one I have the most trust in- I do not anticipate anything to change with moving the Jade in, but am willing to use them as test subjects. 🙂

The weather forecast this week in Vancouver, WA shows 60’s to low 70’s with lots of sunshine, no need to worry about the succulents so much this week. REALLY, no rush with that forecast. I am viewing this like we have one major step completed in winterizing our succulent inventory. As a bonus, we even have the old greenhouse & space that can be re-utilized as an “Orchid House” – as well as a place to store my personal favorites. As I said, I’m in no rush to get the plants moved, in fact, this coming week I have a friend visiting and I’m not planning to spend much time with the plants at all – TOUGH LOVE little succies!

Side note, we are still working our way around the backyard, updating and cleaning it as we go. This is something I love about Brett & I- we attempt (and I think, succeed) to beautify every backyard we have. This place has been no different – now that fall is here, we are kept much busier with raking than in the Bay Area – and with all the moisture in the air, weeds are growing bat-shit crazy fast. We have yet to spray with chemicals to eradicate them because I find it therapeutic to go outside and dig the weeds out.

We have been lucky to come across some great succulent and planter deals around town. As we get more and more serious about Suburban Succulents, everything seems to keep falling into place. Kismet, and that’s how I know things are on the right path.

Hope all of you are finding sweet deals on garden supplies in your towns! Please share in the comments what you stock up on at the end of growing season!