GROWING SUCCS

Meet my Pink Star Earth Stars!

I just started working full-time so I’ve been spending less and less time with my succulents lately. I was pretty bummed about it at first, but it’s turning out to be so much more fun because every time I check on my succulents, I almost always see something new. 

That being said, the “new things” I see aren’t always good things. I’ve also had to deal with root rots that I couldn’t catch in time, propagating leaves that browned from receiving too much water and heat, as well as stems that dried out or cracked. Needless to say, I’ve been scrambling to save some of my struggling succulents. For example, I’ve beheaded the plants whose main stem have been drying out and I’m hoping to grow healthy roots from those cuttings.

My Jade Plant!

When I got new succulents about a couple weeks ago, I was cleaning out dried leaves and re-potting some of them when I found so many propagating leaves, many of which are quite grown! Check them out two weeks later:

1. The “I Can See The Babies” Pot -- look closely and you’ll find a budding Ghost Plant and Echeverias!

2. The “(Seems) Successful Leaf Propagation” Pot -- so far the promising ones are Donkey Tail and Ghost Plant leaves! Really wishing that Moonstone leaf on the left and the Echeveria leaf on the bottom starts growing, too.

3. The “Baby Kalanchoes” pot -- This one’s really fun because I don’t actually have a fully grown Kalanchoe plant. I found a propagating leaf in the pot of one of my newly bought Echeverias and when the mother leaf dried off, I picked these little buds with already grown roots and planted them into this pot. Can’t wait to see how they’ll turn out!

My Haworthia retusa a.k.a. Star Cactus

Aeoniums cannot take too much sun! Learnt this the hard way. Currently putting my Aeonium through rehab so that it can grow fresher leaves to replace the burnt ones.

Larger succulents need more frequent watering especially in places with brighter sun. I placed a bunch of big succulents into one big pot and their larger root systems are taking up much more water (it’s been 2-3 days since watering and the soil is dry all the way again). Some of the leaves are starting to get stressed, turning light colored and wrinkling on the edges. 

Watering can help flowers and shoots sprout. A day or two after watering all my succulents and cactus, I was happily surprised to find a couple of them growing new flowers!

Exactly a week ago, I got this Ghost Plant (Graptopetalum) from a succulent farm. It seems to be years old and had a lot of growth happening, just in odd places, so I thought I’d take it, separate its pups so I can have more than one Ghost Plants in my collection.

The roots on the pups were fully formed, so I wasn’t too worried. I made sure that each pup I cut had its own root structure already. None of them were sturdy, so I had to carefully re-pot each one. 

As I was doing that, many of the leaves from the parent plant came off. Maybe it was time, maybe they became loose/weak from transportation, I’m not sure, but they seemed very healthy for leaf propagation. 

I’m in between trying out different methods of leaf propagation, so decided with these, I’m just going to let them callous over (takes about 2 days for me), and then I’ll just set them in a shallow pot with cactus soil and let them be. 

After 5 days, the calloused ends are showing a very, very tiny white bulge! 

So far, this has been the most promising leaf propagation I’ve had. I live in a hot, humid, tropical country, so misting every day might have been too much for my other shallow pot of leaves that aren’t showing any kind of progress at all. 

What’s even better is that the bigger stem from which these leaves fell off are now growing shoots as well!

Maybe it was time for those leaves to fall off, and I’m so glad it did. This plant looked so off at first, but I knew I had to get it from all the babies it has produced. I’m learning that when it comes to picking succulents at a succulent farm, I really shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover!

So happy with this, and can’t wait to post more updates when I have them. 

I potted this about five days ago. The lower leaves on the biggest succulent is starting to turn bright orange and shriveling up a little bit. Since my succulent garden is in a pretty bright area and it hasn’t rained for days where I am, I’m learning that maybe larger succulents will need more frequent watering in dryer weathers than my mini succulents in smaller pots!

Recently, I went to a succulent farm to look for more plants to add to my growing collection and as I was cleaning some of the dead leaves on the bottom parts of the new succulents I got, I was surprised to find so many babies coming out of the parent plant's stem. When I took the parent plant out of the pot, I found that these babies were actually quite developed. They had their own smaller stem and roots coming out of parts of their own stem, so I made the decision to slowly wiggle their stem off of the parent's stem and tuck their shorter stems with all the roots intact into the soil (cactus soil) in a smaller pot.