Let’s See You Kill These Little Beauties
April 24th, 2018
Succulents are the hot plant category lately… and for good reason.
Succulents come in lots of shapes and colors… and they’re hard to kill.
They’re compact, versatile, colorful, and easy to grow.
They’re not prone to bugs or disease. They need no spraying, little water or fertilizer, and even the deer and bunnies let them alone.
In short, avoid over-watering, and they’re about as low-care and bullet-proof as any plant.
Unlike hydrangeas or roses, succulents aren’t a related family of plants but rather a loosely defined type of plant with similar characteristics – specifically, ones with fleshy foliage or bulbous stems that give them the ability to survive dry conditions.
Think species such as cactus, aloe, sedum, and the old-fashioned favorite “hens and chicks” (a type of sempervivum).
These plants have evolved in arid spots all over the globe – everywhere except Antarctica.
Read George’s post on The Beauty of – Believe It or Not – Desert Plants
Succulents have become increasingly popular the last few years, especially as reluctant, newbie and/or low-care-seeking gardeners discover their merits and ready availability, including at box stores.
Succulents are naturals for rock gardens, but most of them do well lining hot driveways or covering the ground on sunny slopes.
The recent wave of interest finds them as container favorites – less-fussy and harder-to-kill alternatives to annual flowers in pots, window boxes and hanging baskets. So if you’ve never considered anything other than annual flowers in your summer pots, give succulents a thought this May.
The big advantage in pots is that succulents don’t need the daily watering that flowers do.
Succulents make good pot candidates.
And they’re interesting enough that they’re as attractive to experienced plant geeks as they are to black-thumbed beginners.
If you’re going to kill a succulent, it’s usually from too much TLC – primarily too much water.
Don’t water succulents too often or too much, and make sure your containers have drainage holes in the bottom. Soggy soil is the kiss of death to most succulents.
A good rule of thumb: soak them when the soil goes dry, then let them alone until the soil dries again.
In a pot, that might equate to once every 5 to 7 days in summer. In the ground, a succulent usually survives without any supplemental watering.
Remember, succulents DO need water. They just don’t need it as often as most plants.
Also important is using a well drained potting medium for container-grown succulents in the first place. Use a “gritty mix” that’s a blend of bark fines, chicken grit and mineral fragments, such as calcinated or baked clay fragments.
Some succulent growers use aquarium soil or a bagged soil conditioner with grit in the mix. Easier still is buying bags of cactus mix instead of standard potting soil or potting mix.
Most succulents are light feeders as well as light drinkers. In a pot, a gradual-release fertilizer at planting and a diluted, balanced fertilizer two or three times during the growing season is usually plenty.
Succulents in the ground usually need no supplemental fertilizer.
Another benefit to succulents is that most of them are easy to propagate.
Many send out babies (also called “offsets” or “pups”) that can be dug, broken off and planted on their own – even without roots.
Others will root from tip cuttings, and some will grow roots from pinched-off leaves that are simply set on top of the same gritty mix used to grow potted succulents.
One other important thing to know about succulents is that some of them are cold-hardier than others. Some withstand our winters while most are tropicals that need to go inside during cold winters or treated as annuals.
Aeonium ‘Swartkop’– one of my favorite succulents. The leaves are shiny and black.
A few of my favorites:
Hardy succulents: Hens and chicks (Sempervivum arachnoideum), ice plant (Delosperma), and most creeping sedums, especially my favorite sunny groundcover, sedum ‘Angelina,’ and the whole SunSparkler series.
Non-freeze-hardy succulents: black tree aeonium ‘Swartkop,’ most cactuses (I especially like yellow barrel cactus), red salad bowl (Aeonium urbicum rubrum), paddle plant (Kalanchoe luciae), jelly bean plant (Sedum rubrotinctum), jade plant (Crassula ovata), string of pearls (Senecio rowleyanus), blue chalk sticks (Senecio mandraliscae), lithops (nicknamed “living rocks” because they look like rocks), and just about any echeveria, aloe, or euphorbia.