Below are the current succulents I have! I generally have a black thumb, but I’m trying to change that. Any gotchas to keep in mind when taking care of succulents? I already learned the hard way that I need to keep the dwarf jade indoors because direct sun causes the leaves to brown.
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There are lots of varieties of succulents that need different things. But in general, a good start is to make sure that you’re using a soil mix that will drain well and that your pots also have drainage holes to prevent root rot. Make sure the soil is fully dry before watering again and water less in the winter when a lot of varieties go dormant. Your climate will matter a lot. It will determine if you can put them outside in the summer or not and if you’ll have enough sun in the winter. If you don’t have enough sun in the winter, you’ll need a grow light to give them enough light to prevent stretching. These are the very basics and there’s a lot more advice to give depending on the varieties and if you want to propagate and more.
Quick plug if your interested, but I started a succulents community about a week ago. Feel free to join us to get more advice or post your plant progress: !succulents@midwest.social
Ah, I didn’t realize there was a succulent-specific community! I will post there, thank you
I think it’s a me problem but the images aren’t loading. WiFi has been garbage today lol.
Succulents in general like to dry out between waterings. Most of them you can’t watch for them to wrinkle, that’s when I water them. You can bottom up water by taking your well draining pot and putting it in a bucket of water or your sink or whatever and let the water slowly fill from the bottom.
Oh no worries! The succulents I have are a split rock, dwarf jade, panda plant, echeveria elegans, and I forget the name of the last one but it looks spiky (I’ll look it up later). Three of them are in classic terracotta pots with the single large hole in the bottom, so I could likely do the bottom-up watering method with those :)
Oh those are fun! I don’t get enough sunlight for succulents :( I’ve got a few clinging to life with a very expensive plant light but, I don’t think I’ll be getting more unless I move.
If you’re looking for lights for succulents look into weed lights (AKA Cannabis grow lights). The LED fixtures throw A LOT of light and are generally cheaper than plant grow lights. Amazon has a number of them.
Hell, depending on what you want to grow you could repurpose a cheap weed plant “greenhouse” which is a wire frame and some reflective material. Amazon has a number of those for your home.
Specifically for the echeveria - they need a lot of light or they get etiolated. I had to give up on trying to grow them because of that (unless you like tall gangly plants lol).
Yeah I’ve noticed that one growing a little taller lately, been putting it in direct sun so hopefully that helps it out! But yeah my current goal is to keep them alive first, so if the plant gets unnaturally tall but still otherwise happy I’ll take that as a win.
