Succulents: Not Actually Easy
Adorable, lots of shapes and colors, slow-growing, and trendy as hell. Succulents are also extremely popular because they’re supposed to be easy to take care of, but lots of people who have taken the dive know that they are tricky — mainly for those who don’t live in the in their natural habitat: hot, sunny & dry.
I’m located in the US north-east. I have about a billion plants (that are mostly thriving) and two succulents that are kind of sad. Over the years I’ve had a LOT of succulents that were all kinds of sad, and usually died. Why?
What succulents need
- Very intermittent watering (easy)
- Very high sunlight (not easy in the north)
Succulents like big dumps of water very far apart from each other, like 3 or more weeks between watering. The larger the pot, the longer you should wait. To debunk some myths, they don’t care about humidity, and you should not spray them! Their leaves are waterproof, so they don’t absorb it, and the extra damp can cause plant illnesses.
Some common problems
Thin, deflated looking leaves
If its been a long time since you watered it, your plant is fine! Its just time for another watering :)
If you’ve watered it within the past week, you may have the beginnings of the too-much-water problem. Try transplanting it, or propagate some still-plump leaves. (I’ll describe how to do that in the next section.)
Wrinkly leaves
Too much water. Your only hope is transplanting them into new soil, but it might be too late. Attempting to propagate a leaf at this point probably won’t work, because it doesn’t have enough stored up nutrients, but its worth a try!
Long stringy stem
Not enough sunlight. Your succulent is healthy, just ugly. Its attempting to reach for more sunlight, and unless you’ve got a super bright window to move it to, this might be a sign that your home isn’t a good match for this sun-loving species. Alternately, get a really bright plant light for them!
If you ARE able to light it up, I recommend chopping off the top bit where the leaves are tighter together, and re-rooting it, which I shall describe next.
How to propagate and re-root succulents
- Choose a succulent that has been watered in the past week and has nice plump leaves.
- Cut the stem just below a leaf (with clean, sharp scissors), or take a single leaf that has been broken off from the stem cleanly.
- Let it sit for a couple hours, so the end scabs over.
- Once its nice and dry, just set it lightly on the surface of some soil. It will use its stored resources to grow roots! Thats it, super easy.
I hope this proves helpful to some of your northern plant aspire-ers! And hey, even if you kill 2 or 10 succulents in the process of learning, that’s ok! Plants don’t feel pain the same way mammals do! They will forgive you. Whatever happens, if you want it, keep trying and you’ll eventually get it. That’s just how it works. I believe in you!