In today's DIY guide we are going to learn how to multiply your succulent collection by propagating succulent leaves.
Who else has a pile of succulent leaves just sitting there on your potting bench slowly but surely wasting away? I'm guilty as charged.🙋🏻♀️ What if I told you there was a way to make all those sad forgotten leaves into potential cute succulent babies. Yes, more succulents please!
In this step by step guide you will learn how to start your very own propagation tray using four items that you may already have lying around in your garden.
MATERIALS YOU NEED:
1. Nursery tray/flat
2. Soil
3. Catalog paper
4. Succulent leaves
Step 1: I grab my nursery tray or flat and wipe it down from any dirt or cobwebs.🕸️ I like to use the nursery flats with smaller holes, I feel that they provide a better base for the soil.👍🏼
Step 3: Soil time, for this tray I used Black Gold cactus mix. This soil is pr-made and has all the nutrients and mediums for your succulent leaves to stay nice and dry and will also help your new succulent babies grow strong. I take 10 handfuls of soil and make a mound right in the center of the flat. This will give me about one inch or so of depth. Feel free to use as much dirt as you'd like, this is only a guide.
Step 2: If you have any store catalogs lying around I recommend you to use this type of paper. I find that this kind of paper is a lot thicker than the notebook kind. It's up to you which type you'd like to use. I rip six pages out and lay them over one another using three for the top of the flat and the other three for the bottom of the flat.
How Your Propagation Trays Should Look
As you can see I don't lay my leaves in any kind of order or size, this is completely up to you. I tend to collect leaves in a flat as I create new succulent arrangements, and once I have a full tray it's when I create the propagating flats. If you are the type to organize your leaves by variety, more power to ya! It will also make your identifying process a lot easier.
Patience Is a Virtue...⏰
It will take a few weeks until you see small pink roots growing out of your succulent leaves. At this point start to give them a mist of water using a spray bottle about every three days or so, if the weather is dry mist them more often. You don't want to soak the dirt, soaking the dirt will end up making your leaves retain too much water, they will get mushy and rot.😢
It will be a few months until you actually start to see any babies, but when you do, it will be extremely fulfilling. The leaf that you see here is bout 5 months old. As you can see the leaf is still nice and plump. At this point I will fill a 2 inch nursery pot with soil and place my leaf right on top. The leaf will eventually dry up completely and wither away. I'll pluck it off and the baby plant will have hopefully rooted into the soil. I will keep misting my baby plant until it outgrows it's 2 inch nursery pot.
3 comments
Do I lay the ones down that look like twists too?
Thanks for the info, yes patience for sure, which I don’t have for succulents want them to grow grow grow, lol
How can separate,them,
And take care in winter?