I do seem to have luck with succulents, in that they seem to grow for me, so I thought I'd see how far I could push that luck. And the short answer is, quite far. On a trip to the garden centre to buy a couple of succulents I noticed some discarded leaves in the bottom of the trays, so after checking with the staff there I left with my bedding plants, a couple of succulent plants and quite a few of those discarded leaves.
I wanted to see if I could get them to grow. And basically, get some free plants.
Unsure quite how to proceed I started by stuffing one leaf into a pot. While it didn't die, it didn't really grow either. But what I noticed was the leaves I'd not done anything with were starting to form roots.
Checking the internet I learnt that the trick is to make a clean cut - oops, too late there and to leave the leaves to dry out. So once again the conservatory - home of the succulents - was called into action. During the warm weather it was the ideal place for some low effort propagating.
The idea was for the leaves to dry out, which seemed counter-productive to producing new plants, but after a week or so, look what happened.
My free succulent leaves were starting to sprout new flowers and what I assume are roots. At this stage I put them near some soil. Not in soil. On it. I used a gritty soil as succulents seem to like that. I really wasn't sure what would happen. All I needed to do, apparently, was to keep the soil moist.
And sure enough, they started to grow.
And now, I have a new generation of succulents from a few leaves that had been knocked off the plants. Including a couple of new-to-me varieties.
It's so easy I couldn't believe it, and so easy I bet you could do it too. In fact the hardest thing was the waiting!
Let me know how you get on if you give it a try.
