Crazy in the best way: what Kyle and I have been up to

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that my partner-in-crime Kyle and I have been working on something big behind the scenes. This post about our 36-hour trip to Santa Barbara in July may have given you some clues.

Closeout plants from San Marcos Growers Kyle and I brought home from our trip to Santa Barbara in July

So many new plants need room — room that Kyle and I definitely didn’t have.

That’s where luck came in.

Through sheer serendipity, things fell into place. Our friend Eric, who lives on a large rural property in West Sacramento less than a mile from the Sacramento River, agreed to rent us space in his partially unused greenhouse. That’s where our haul from San Marcos Growers went:

But our new space in Eric’s greenhouse isn’t just home to San Marcos plants. Kyle and I have brought over dozens (hundreds?) of plants from our respective backyard “nurseries.”

How the heck did we end up with all these plants?

Here’s a short video of our stock area with the mother plants that we’ll be propagating from:

And here are the plants we’re offering in our first-ever plant sale — everything from companion plants like plectranthus and tradescantia to aloes, agaves, hechtias, dyckias, echeverias, etc:

Our first plant sale will be on Halloween, Saturday, October 31, from 10 am to 2 pm. Most plants will be $5, $10, $15, or $20. Some rare plants, or larger specimens, will be priced a bit higher. Cash only.

Partners-in-crime

Our plant sale will be in conjunction with Eric’s open garden, featuring cacti and succulents in repurposed metal containers. Remember my post from June? Eric has expanded his collection since then. There’ll be lots to see, like-minded people to talk to you, and even some refreshments.

If you live in Northern California (or happen to be there on October 31) and would love to come by, please email me and I’ll send you the address.

As an extra incentive, the UC Davis Arboretum will have their first public sale the same day, Saturday, October 31, from 9 am to 1 pm (more info here). You could swing by their sale first and then head over to see us in West Sacramento, a 25-minute drive from the Arboretum Teaching Nursery. Officially, our sale goes from 10 am to 2 pm, but we’ll be around if you arrive a little later.

Kyle and I are lucky in that we’re not in this for the $$$. Our goal is to bring landscape-ready succulents to Northern California. Most of the plants we have are simply not available in mainstream nurseries, and we want you to give them a new home in your garden.

This sale, our first, is an experiment. If all goes well, we’ll have another one in the spring. Gerhard has been propagating a lot of echinopsis, and many of them will be available then. And Kyle has been working on a number of aloes that would make perfect landscape specimens.

Here’s a preliminary list of plants we’ll have available in our October 31 sale:

I’ll post another reminder closer to the sale date, but here are the 3 W’s:

WHEN:

• Saturday, October 31, 2026, 10 am to 2 pm

WHAT:

• Kyle and Gerhard’s first plant sale
• Eric’s open garden

WHERE:

• West Sacramento (email me for address)

It would be wonderful to see some of you there!

© Gerhard Bock, 2026. All rights reserved. To receive all new posts by email, please subscribe here.