About two months ago, I decided to teach myself about propagating succulents and growing them from succulent leaves. When we’re not road tripping or editing photos / video, I spend a lot of my time teaching myself random skills. Cultivating a small urban garden off our balcony was one of them. Along with my dwarf lemon tree (which still happens to be alive!), I wanted to add some succulents in the mix. People always say that succulents are easy to maintain even for serial plant killers like me. To make it even more challenging, though, I gave myself an extra step to see if I could grow them from a leaf cutting. This was the journey…
Just a few tips I learned along the way on urban gardening and propagating succulents:
1. After you take the leaves off the stem as close to the stem as possible, let them sit out and callous for a day or two.
2. When they are calloused, lay them on top of soil with their calloused end pointing down.
3. Water them daily with a few sprays from a water bottle. In California, putting them on the windowsill gave them too much sun. Many got sunburnt which resulted in many casualties. I hear from friends living in Georgia that you can leave them sitting anywhere around the house, and they will sprout on their own from the humidity in the air. How you propagate and take care of your succulents largely depends on where you live and the climate.
4. Finally, after 3-4 weeks, you’ll see some of them growing roots!
But then after that many more will die. One of the roots grew out so long! It was so sad to see it die after all that progress. Lots of trials and lots of errors.
5. Finally, after they all die, go buy yourself some fully grown succulents! jk. I actually had a few survivors, but because we moved again, I ended only keeping the strongest one and buying more from a flea market. Poor guys.
If you want to learn some in depth tips, I recommend reading this book by cassidy, a fellow blogger. :) She has a lot of helpful tips and maybe you might have a better percentage of survivors than I did!
All photos were taken via iphone & instagram. You can follow my garden’s progress on there. :)
nice!! I managed to kill our only succulent haha. def want to try propagating them tho