I love love LOVE succulents! I have them decorating my desk, my porch, the windowsill… basically everywhere around house. And they make great gifts for friends and family as well!
Propagating succulents is actually much easier than you might think – in fact, I grew some new succulents totally on accident before I realized how it actually works!
This method works best for succulents that drop their leaves easily. This doesn’t really work for plants like aloe, agave, etc. since they form offsets (which you can separate and plant in new pots). But if you have a succulent like Echeveria or other “veria” hybrids, propagation via cuttings/leaves is a piece of cake!
I like to feel the leaves toward the base of the plant since they’re usually easier to remove. You’ll want to gently wiggle the leaf to remove the leaf’s base from the stem, which shouldn’t take much force. Be careful not the break the leaf in the middle – it’s the base of the leaf connected to the stem that contains “meristem” cells to form the new roots. You can take other types of cuttings as well (such as from the top of the plant), but I personally like just taking the leaves so I won’t dismantle the succulents I’m getting the cuttings from.
After you’ve collected your leaves, set them out to dry away from directly sunlight for a few days to a week. You don’t need to use a rooting hormone or even water them – in fact, you want to try to keep them dry to prevent the leaves from rotting. Once they’re dry, gently place them on top of your succulent potting soil. You can nestle them in the soil a little bit, but you don’t need to bury them.
In a few weeks or so, you’ll notice baby succulents sprouting from the ends of the leaves. They’ll have thin roots now, and you can begin to water them (though not too much since succulents don’t need much water).
Once they’ve grown a bit, you can transfer each one into its own pot if you want to!
Here’s a link to an organic succulent potting soil mix I recommend from Back to the Roots. It helps water drain faster and provides the correct nutrient/soil mixture to grow healthy, happy succulents!
And with all these new succulents, here’s a link to a set of 24 terracotta pots you can get to plant the babies in. You can also paint and decorate these for extra creative flair (I’m going to make a post on that in the near future).
That’s really all there is to it – succulents are super easy to grow and low maintenance! Soon you can have a whole bunch of them, and they make great gifts for friends and family!
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