I keep my succulent nursery on a west facing bookcase under the kitchen window. That way it's in bright shade, I see it every morning while the kettle boils and I'm feeling as low as I usually do in the morning. They are a little stab of pleasure, seeing how they're slowly, slowly, coming along.
Propagating succulents is not hard, but very very slow. They are perfectly willing to reproduce, but on their own time. First you carefully take off a leaf from a parent plant, mine were a bit of gardener's larceny from the plants next door, then you leave it alone for weeks. That lets it scab over at the stem end.
Then you rest it on top of a mix, whatever works for you. I've found no difference between potting soil and coco fiber, supposedly the great stuff. Weeks go by, then you might see a microscopic plant or root starting at the stem end. And you leave it alone again.
These are the first ones I started, months ago. The big leaf is the aloe next door to it, shoving its way in. I had bloodwork done Friday and the tech was amazed to discover I use aloe in the kitchen for burns. She promptly decided to get one herself. I asked her how often she gets medical advice from her patients! She's a terrific hemo tech, no problem at all with my tiny thready veins, and she's interested in new ideas. She's good.
Anyway, back to echeveria. Once it finally starts to be big enough to see, you still leave it alone, very little watering needed, since the baby plant is getting moisture from the parent leaf for ages.
These I started from fallen leaves off the parent plant. The leaves are starting to wither as the baby plant takes the moisture. Notice almost every one has grown.
And during the winter, they get a bit leggy, echeveria, that is, and I twisted off a rosette from the top of a parent plant which I'm fostering for the winter. See here, the baby on the left doing well, while the parent in the middle, nothing daunted, has put out a new rosette on the scab of the old one. And all the fallen leaves I rested around them have started new plants. By spring this will be a visible arrangement.
And, either you get all excited and engrossed about this or, as a friend of mine recently commented, after bending double to get close enough to see the tiny baby plants, you're easily pleased! Well, I am. In the larger scheme of things, it pays.
I have to say that propagating succulents is one of the slowest motion hobbies there ever was. You do one stage, wait six weeks, do the next stage, wait another few weeks..not for the impatient.
Anyway here's the update: of the six leaves I started,
three have resulted in new plants, so tiny you need a magnifying glass to
see them.
So a fifty per cent germination rate, probably not too bad as these things go. I hope the new plants get big enough to actually see soon, since I have plans for them. Interestingly, there were two leaves per pot, and one per pot survived. I wonder if they fought it out in some vegetal way, to determine who would propagate?
And on the subject of babies, I noticed recently that the red bellied woodpecker, mainly the male, was at the feeder almost incessantly and today found out why: he brought his baby to sit on the branch above the feeder, and proceeded to ferry suet up to him.
I guess it was easier to bring the baby to the food, now he's fledged, than to bring the food to the nest/cavity. It must be in the trees right outside my back gate, since that's where he routinely vanished with suet recently. And since it was almost exclusively the male doing the foraging, this father is a good provider. I've noticed the same with cardinals, too, often the male coping with young learning to feed themselves.
This brings to six the number of young families being provided for by my feeder, very good to know. Word probably got around that this mix was a good one.
