Succulent Propagation

Welcome to my Succulent Zen Spot! I've been wanting to write this post for a long time but now I finally found a good way to show them to you on pic.

There are a lot of good info on succulent propagation on the internet, I learned my how to through google searches too. However, with all the info on the web, I feel it's lacking some informative photos to go with, especially when I started this process and didn't know all the gardening terms and plant names.

If you're a succulent hoarder like me, things could get quite expansive. All the plants look so cute in the store yet they take so so long to grow, you tend to keep purchasing more and more to fill up that garden area. I started to propagate not only to add new plants to my garden, but also help the existing plants to grow thicker and lush. Baby plants and cuttings does take some time to establish new roots and get comfy in their new environment. Here is my set up for home propagation "system", it really doesn't take much.

These are leaflets that either fell off from handling or I plugged them to kind of force the existing plant grow more buds. I throw them on a tray and let it root. This was my baking tray and I placed foil underneath, no reason for the foil, just something that helped to keep the tray clean in case I needed it later. Most medium fleshy leaves roots well without rooting hormone, some takes long to root by itself, so I do dip them in rooting hormone. You can purchase rooting hormone in any gardening store. I don't water them at this stage, watering could easily lead to rotting right now. We need to wait until the leaflets start to sprout before watering.  Keep them dry and warmer areas works better than colder ones. I have mine in front of window where they do get some bright lights but NO DIRECT SUN. See some of the leaflets rooted like crazy and started budding new plant, I then transfer these leaflets to another dish where there's some soil for it to drink some nutrient.

Here's another shot of the different leaflets at this tray. Some of the leaflets just roots and never sprout anything, I will wait and wait until the leaflet is completely shriveling then I throw it away. Some sprouts without rooting, and some does both very quickly. As long as the leaflet is not completely dead, there's always hope!

So once they root and sprout a bud of new plant, I transfer them here. I have succulent appropriate soil here and white sand on the top. You don't need the white sand, I used this tray for growing lithops before so I reused it after my lithops were a little bigger.

Here's another baby dish, this is soil only, works the same way. The roots will extend downward and outward, the budding new plant will be slightly bigger. I spray these once or twice a day depending on my mood. You might want to give them some plant food if you please, it does make them grow a little faster. Just follow direction according to what you purchased. You can see in these two photos, some of the leaflets starts to turn brown yellow, that means the leaflets are doing it's thing, providing nutrient for the new plant, and now the new plant has sucked up all that's left, when it's light and paper thin, you can detach these leaflets. You DO need to WAIT until it's COMPLETELY DRY, even if it's almost completely dry and you plug then out, you're risking pulling the roots away with the old leaflet leaving the new plant rootless. 

Once the plant is freed from it's  old leaflet, I transfer them again to my little garden dish. They are absolutely not ready for the direct sun yet, even the morning sun could burn these little guys quick. I have these indoors by another window, it receives maybe 20 mins of afternoon sun during the summer. You may wish to plant these by their mother plants too, as long as it gives enough shade so it won't dry up.

Here are more of my baby plants. So cute aren't they?! I'm really running out of room of where to keep them.

Here's an overview of the process (they are all from the same type of plant, but it's a good shot for the purpose of showing it's progress). 1) brand new leaflet from mother plant. 2)leaflet starts to root. 3) sprouting new plant. 4) growing healthy and old leaflet starts to shrink. 5) old leaflet is completely dried up. 6) detach old leaflet from new plant.