Steps to expand and beautify your succulent garden

Succulent gardening is a water wise, easy to maintain and an on trend method of gardening. Color variations range from variegated – or multicolored – to shades of green, blue, red, reddish-purple, yellow and even pink. Their leaves can be smooth, fuzzy, needle-shaped or drop-like berries. With an almost endless array of colors and textures to choose from, succulents can add color and texture to every corner of your home or yard.

When you shop for succulents at your local garden center, determine whether you wish to grow your succulents from tiny plants – more cost effective – or if you want to dive in with an already mature plant.

Full grown succulents can range in price from $15 to $50, depending on the size, pot and arrangement you choose. Most home store garden centers also offer tiny succulents allowing you to group and gather your own miniature succulent garden designs. These easy to grow and easier to propagate plants will multiply over time, enabling you to separate and transplant them into more containers. Indeed, succulent gardening can be a rewarding and cost effective solution to your water wise garden landscape.

Step One – Choose your plant

Choosing your succulent plants doesn’t have to be luck of the draw. Research online, or read the plant tags at your home garden nursery center. Still in doubt? Ask a friend or neighbor for a “cutting” from their succulent garden.

Many of these easy to grow plants, such as the Hen and Chicks, which starts with a large rosette “hen.” Smaller rosette “chicks” will satellite the plant, and these little chicks are best for propagation or re-rooting to new “hen” plants.

Jade and other succulents can be snapped at the stalk and stuck in the ground. This act is also known as propagating your plant. For southern California, our growing season is pretty much all year, but spring is always an ideal time to start the propagation process.

Step Two – Multiply your succulents

Start with your plant, such as the popular rosette styled Hen and Chicks or woody stemmed, many leafed Jade plant. Neither of these succulents will stay little for long, and you will need to separate the broadening plants into transplantable pots for re-rooting purposes.

Use a sharp pair of gardening snips to ensure a “clean” break from your cutting, below the rosette, leaving enough stalk to transplant in new soil – approximately 2 to 4 inches of leaf-free stalk. Depending on the size of your plant, you can use a tiny re-purposed pot, such as a recycled Kurig Cup, as your initial propagating pot, or make use of any sized terra cotta pot.

Push the stalk into new, fertilized soil – such as Miracle Grow potting mix. Many gardeners suggest a re-rooting compound at this stage, or additive such as B-1 to avoid shock in the plant, but for most woody-stemmed succulents, this step is not necessary.

Most importantly, make sure the new pot has ample drainage, and work your soil so that it is moist, but not muddy.

Note: Never let your succulent rest in standing water, as it can cause rot or fungal disease that will kill your plant. Remove dead leaves, to avoid pests and insect activity.

Step Three – Proper care and feeding

Design a nursery garden for your newly propagated plants. Picture the nursery at the hospital, with many beds, all grouped together for easy access by the nurse.

Your nursery garden should be separate from your patio garden, like a little green house area, where you can tend your new baby-plants in multiple pots and nurture them as they grow. Move little plants to larger containers, and experiment with groupings of colors. If you are gardening in a small space, the nursery can be your entire container

garden!

For most succulents, simple daily watering will do to see them grow and flourish, however you may wish to add liquid Miracle Grow for added nutrient boost. Ideally, your nursery garden will be in part sun-part shade.

Step Four – Transplant your succulents

Over four to six weeks, you will notice the flourishing plants and see they’re ready for transplanting. When it comes to gardening, like real estate, it’s all about location, location, location.

Are you transplanting into chic styled indoor pots for a tiny garden? Move straight from step two to step four, and plant the tiny rosettes right away. A simple mist from a spray bottle is enough for these little beauties that barely need soil to grow.

Step Five – Be fruitful, and multiply

Fill your indoor and outdoor spaces with your newly propagated succulents. Fill and experiment with hanging baskets, container gardening, table-scapes, terrariums and patio containers. Use the many bright and beautiful colors available to create unique and textured combinations.

Once you begin expanding your succulent garden, you will find you have more succulents than you know what to do with. It’s a little known fact that the Jade Plant—also known as the Money Plant, Friendship Tree or Lucky Plant—is thought to bring good fortune and feng shui.

This popular good luck charm is a traditional gift for new homeowners, businesses, and it is believed by some that when planted in the southeast location, the Jade plant can bring prosperity and success.

Both the and Jade and Hen Chick can flower over time, which tends to mean that you have cared and tended your plants and they have enjoyed long lives.

A flowering Hen and Chick will generally mean the end of that “Hen” as the monocarpic plant will flower, seed and then die. Most Hen and Chicks will not flower until the plant is over four years in age (fully mature). Before flowering, your succulent will have provided you with many offset “chicks” to propagate and transplant. Unlike many plants that can be encouraged to keep growing by denying a bloom, a flowering Hen will die anyway, so let it bloom and produce seeds for future plants.

A flowering Jade is thought to bring friendship and good fortune. The flowering can be forced on a mature plant, when you ensure up to four hours a day of natural sunlight, cut back on watering – by not fully saturating the soil – and making sure it is in a location that gets cool to cold night air. The result of the flowering is ultimately up to the plant, but many love to try for this beautiful, unique flower.