Propogating Plantlets En Mass

It's been AWHILE since my last entry, for the purely simple reason that my gardening time has been taken up by my non-succulent plants! I think I will cave and post all gardening stuff up here. I'm just doing too well with the dahlias!

This photo spread is a look at the "nursery" I set up in my mini-greenhouse. Some of the plants are cuttings, some are plants developing from dropped leaves, and some are just little plants, like my baby butterfly kalanchoes that grew on the leftovers from my deadheading of the pink plants.

Wanted to show the spray bottle, because I've found it's by far the BEST way to water plantlets and small cuttings. I got the spray bottle at Daiso Japan, my favorite "dollar" store (most items are actually $1.50). I set it to mist and then I mist the hell out of the plants. I want it looking like a Stephen King flick, at least for a millisecond. I'm done when everybody's all shiny and the soil is dark.

Most of these little guys are what I call "self-starters" or "accidental" propagation. Once a month, or just when I'm weeding, I look for dropped leaves that have started to grow into plants. Some succulents are so delicate the leaves just drop off when you brush them, so it's careful work to reach in and pick out the leaf with its plantlet and pink roots. I gotta be totally honest. I was at my parents' this weekend. I went through some of my mom's pots and stole her self-starters! Only five... besides, she container-gardens. No room for the plants to expand. I'm giving them life! Wink, wink. Emoji needed here.

If you take a look at this particular photo, you'll see that to the far right and center left are TWO BABY BUTTERFLY KALANCHOE PLANTS! These guys came from the leftover stems I had stuck in the dirt! They grew without leaves, so I popped them off their stems and after giving them a day or so to callous, set them in this wet, enriched soil. Weird thing; I've got three of the baby butterflies in here right now, and only the smallest one has developed roots at this point.

The aeonium above is the popular canariense variety, and is the last of about five cuttings I took the last time I "reorganized" that plot of plants. The other cuttings grew roots splendidly and have been popped in the ground with the rest of the succulent patch. Amazing to think they were cut off of plants that I bought originally at the size of the tiny cutting!

Sometimes you get strange growth. At the bottom center of the photo is a fuzzy little guy from my OTHER awesome kalanchoe, the fang plant. It's grown roots, but it doesn't seem to be developing a plant. It happens. Since it already has roots, I'm giving it a chance to turn into a "real" plant. This photo mostly contains ghost plant, jelly bean, and Fred Ives.

The Fred Ives plant has blown my mind. I bought one plant three years ago, and now I have at least ten fully-grown offshoot plants! An example of it is the orange-green rosette looking sideways at the center right. Fred Ives are one of those rainbow varieties, and while they aren't my FAVORITE, they are great to keep putting around the patch! Their plantlets grow REALLY weird, and always look wavy and wrong when tiny. I have two in my doll head pots right now. The other doll head has a ghost plant baby.

My original Fred Ives echeveria.

Here is a lovely ghost plant picture from the queen of succulents, Debra Lee Baldwin. Just look at those colors! Very excited about all my little ones!

Deadheading: SUCCESS!

Original Blog Entry on Deadheading

It took about three weeks, but the deadheading experiment was beyond successful, and let me share how:

The smaller of the two butterfly kalanchoes.

Toes!

First, the two "heads" of the pink butterfly kalanchoe I had decapitated grew nice roots and I successfully put them in the garden. Both plants are now independent and will continue to grow on their own. This was exciting enough, and you can see how well they're doing by the number of pink plantlets they've grown!

Now for the really exciting part... the "leftovers" proved regenerative as well! Every single piece of plant was growing something new!

The larger of the "head" plants.

The two bits of stem that still had "leaves" are growing tiny Audrey II's! Okay, here's what we're really seeing. Kalanchoes always grow with opposite-pair leaves. The "mouth" shape is the first two leaves of A NEW PLANT. Yup, at each of those spots a brand-new pink butterfly kalanchoe grows!

"I'm a MEAN GREEN MOTHER FROM OUTER SPACE!"

All of the new growth on the plant starts out pink!

Growers of a particular and very picky plant would probably refer to these future plants as "clones." When you reproduce a succulent with cuttings, you are creating "clones" of the original plant. Yeah, term doesn't sound as cool now, does it? Think of all the cloning you've probably done!

I'm not sure how the sticks will turn out, even the ones with roots still intact. I popped 'em all in the ground which I saturated with water. I use the shady area at the rear of my succulent patch as a sort of nursery/grow spot for delicate plants I want to put in full sun.

All plant pieces were planted, some just shoved, in the always-shady area, where they will grow, and my pink butterfly kalanchoes will takeover the garden!

You can see that the stem itself is near-death and dried out.

Pink plantlets!

The closest photo I could get with the iPhone. Those pink zits are tiny, wee baby plants.

Mother of Thousands: The Saga Continues

There was one patch of soil on my property that hadn't been cultivated. This was a strange rectangular piece at the top of the driveway. It often strikes me that my property has way too much space for plants and not enough space for the actual house itself. I also had the job of potting the mother of thousands tubiflora plant I had been given and ignorantly put into the actual ground.

I put about twelve plants in a smaller pot inside my house, these are the rest of the offspring.

The first job was to plant the remaining mother of thousands baby plants into a pot that coordinated a little more with the house. I stuffed all of the plants into a large blue pot, and I'm already thinking I should have just dragged the huge, white pot they were in out to the front and kept them there. This pot won't be large enough for very long. The bright-green plants will turn the same beige and pink shade as the other plant.

The tubiflora version has already grown much larger than I anticipated and will need a larger pot.

Second, I uprooted the tubiflora and planted it in another dark blue pot I had. This plant has already grown enough so that I can easily see I'm going to have to put it in a much larger pot. Sigh. Oh well, at least I've moved it from the direct soil.

Now at the top of the drive I have two baby agave marginitas and two pots of slightly-different mother of thousands plants. The passion-flower that covers the wall, as you can see, is actually a very small part of the entire plot, and I have one more area to put an agave or another similarly large succulent. Since I have extra ground cover from the planters in back, I'm going to cover the soil with with it. Since I also have extra lining from putting rocks down, I think I'll prep for weeds by laying that down first.

Closing the Circle (no, this is not a Wiccan thing)

Aeonium rosettes cut cleanly from the mother plant.

This morning I did a little plant trimming and moving to complete the circle of aeoniums around my agave marginita. I started by cutting aeonium rosettes, then found that I had a smaller plant I could pull out and replant, as well as a rosette that had rooted.

This plant could be pulled out of the circle without leaving a large gap.

This little guy had already formed its own roots, so was a perfect choice.

In the larger plant I pulled, you can see how the long, brown stem would stand out as rather ugly in less dense foliage. This is a reason to deadhead a plant, and you would cut the stem off cleanly as closely to the "head" as possible.

Closing the gap. You can see I left some space for the agave where I had trimmed off leaves.

 I dug holes and planted the two rooted plants in the gap where the Mexican feather grass bush had been. They nearly enclose the space as is, but in less than a year will be dense enough with new growth to complete an entire circle around the agave.

Planted and watered.

After I planted the rooted plants, I got lazy. Because the aeoniums grow so prolifically, I wasn't too worried about coddling the two cuttings I had made. I set them in place lightly on top of the soil after I watered it for the rooted plants. Hopefully, without too much intervention from me, they will naturally callus and create a root system for themselves. It's worked before; these aeoniums are tough suckers!

Cuttings placed lightly balanced on the other plants so they won't touch soil directly.

The small plant in front/in back of the agave and aeoniums needs me to do some research on it (it was a gift), but I'm hoping it will be a small tree.

Agave Marginita - Time for a Trim

Ah, the agave. Favorite plant of city landscapers, likely due to the fact that it's nearly impossible to kill, will always make MORE agave to keep it company, and is so dangerous it keeps those ruffians off the street medians and freeway landscapes. The preferred agave is the Weber's Blue Agave which is the same agave used to make tequila, yay! However, the plant grows to be HUGE, boo! When it came time to get rid of my blue agave, the plant weighed about 175 pounds, and it wasn't nearly full grown. I couldn't do anything other than trim off the blade-like leaves to make it easier for the MEN to haul it out of the ground.

Weber's Blue Agave or agave tequilana at about 4-5 years old

There are nicer agaves to grow. One of two types of agaves I have held onto is the agave marginita. This agave is variegated with stripes of bluish-green, yellow, and white. It has some advantages over the agave tequilana:

• The marginita does not send out long rhizomes, and nearly all "pups" (or baby plants) will grow right at its base.
• It puts out very few pups, where an agave tequilana puts out dozens constantly (I rudely referred to mine as a slut)
• It is smaller than the agave tequilana, and can be planted in tighter quarters.
• It's more colorful than Weber's Blue
• It doesn't form a huge body filled with liquid-heavy, tequila-production friendly pulp

Agave marginita in late 2013

My own agave marginita was purchased by my brother in the autumn of 2013. It was very small, perhaps 8" tall at the most. As it grew, it produced very few pups, and when I redesigned by garden, I was able to dig it out, move it, and replant it myself without the help of extra muscle. I'm going to guess that when it did that in 2015 it weighed about thirty pounds, max.

Agave marginita in the summer of 2015

I decided to make it a focal piece in the new design, surrounding it with aeoniums. At least, it WOULD be surrounded by the aeoniums, once they bred a bit more and I separated and spread them out. The plant had grown into a lovely, wavy thing that reminded me of undersea kelp, and since I was going for the tidal pool look (a VERY popular succulent-garden design) the plant was perfect.

Nearly a year later and some things had changed. The aeoniums quickly grew and filled in the space around the plant with the exception of where the large Mexican feather grass bush grew. The agave itself grew in and on top of the aeoniums, and I decided that now was the time to trim it. The feather grass bush had given me MANY offspring bushes, and I pulled the original plant (which a neighborhood cat had decided to make into a toilet). This left a C-shape of aeoniums around the agave with some clear soil room for me to do some trimming.

Pups are growing, a tiny one on the right and a couple of larger ones on the left.

There were two tasks to be completed when it came to trimming the plant. First, I had to remove crowded, older leaves that had grown too close to the other plants and the soil. Next, I had to remove any pups that were growing off the mother plant. The feather grass bush had been so large it left a very nice-sized opening for me to work with.

My preferred blade for agave trimming.

To do this trimming, you will want a very sharp knife with a long blade, at least three to four inches. A box-cutter will not be long enough and you'll have to make slice after slice and saw through the leaf, which is about 3 inches thick at the base. A sharp blade will slice cleanly through, while a dull blade will get caught on the extremely tough fibrous tissue the plant is made of. Keep in mind that you are working among other large leaves, all of which have thorns on their edges, so you want a took that works well, fast, and requires the least amount of movement on your part!

 When I had finished, there were about 8-10 cut leaves and four pup plants that had been cut off. Most of the pups were not viable as individual plants because I had carelessly sliced through them without getting some of the rhizome/root.

After trimming. Those aeoniums really filled in!

 I could have trimmed off more leaves, but I like the plants to look full. In another year I'll have to trim around the plant again, removing those leaves closest to the ground, by which time it will have produced new ones from the center to take their place. At this point, I'm going to be separating, rooting and planting the aeoniums in order to complete a full circle around the agave.

Viable pup has roots growing separately from the slashed-through rhizome.

There was one viable pup that I decided to keep alive. I really do love how this plant looks. My father helped me remove the largest of the blue agave's offspring, and I put this little guy in its place. The patch at the top of my drive is the LAST part of the garden to be gotten in order, and I've decided to do succulents there as well.

The removed agave tequilana is probably about two years old.

Aw, it looks just like its mother plant did when we planted her!

Deadheading: It's Not As Bad As It Sounds

There comes a time in most succulent's lives where you're going to have to cut off their heads. Don't worry, it sounds a lot worse than it really is.

Grew under some portulaca, was reaching for the sun.

Most succulent plants look best without long stems. However, most succulents will grow extremely long stems the longer they are alive, which can look awkward. There are also conditions a plant may grow in which cause it to stretch when it should be dish-shaped, and dead-heading is great for these plants, too.

I used a dead stem to prop up the plant heads so they'll grow straight.

Today, I finally cut off the heads of my pink butterfly kalanchoes. This plant, which originally was one, is now three (I gave one to my mother), and the two remaining had stems nearly two feet long. The stems reached horizontally along the ground so the plants could get into the bright sunshine. Not very attractive, so, I cut them off.

The bottom of the stem is close to, but not touching the soil.

You want to use a very sharp knife, preferably as clean as possible. Once you've beheaded your plant, place it in a pot hovering JUST ABOVE some moist soil. This encourages the plant to grow roots to reach that soil. With this plant, the long "leaves" provide a prop to keep the stem from touching.

It usually takes a few weeks for the plant to grow new roots. Yes, you can just cut some heads off and stick them in the ground, but they won't necessarily root that way, and they may rot. For plants you really love, take it slow.

There's a tiny pink plantlet to the right of the pot!

The "leftovers" aren't necessarily useless, either. The rooted stem, once the head of the plant is removed, might begin growing small plantlets where leaves formerly grew, or even at the top where the "head" was removed. Since I had to cut the stem into more than one piece (it was THAT LONG), I threw them all in a pot together with the rooted bits to give them a chance to make some babies.


I don't know how this will turn out, but I'm hoping that at least the "heads" of the plants will root successfully, as they are some of my favorite. The little pink plantlets are just gorgeous, and unlike other mother-of-thousands plants, cannot grow into plants themselves.

The two rooted stems and the other cut pieces.

The Results!

Kalanchoe Blooms and Rebirth

The first plant is the tall stalk, the second is the recognizable fang plant next to it.

There is a type of kalanchoe that if it isn't, at least should be rather popular. Known colloquially as a "fang plant" or even "lambs ear" it features very large, spade-shaped leaves covered with soft fuzz and having curious pointy bumps on the outer surface. It's a fantastic plant, and the one I have has been through a lot, even a beheading and re-rooting. After about three years with  me, it decided to bloom. While it's amazing to have your succulents bloom, the succulents like kalanchoes and aeoniums that have the longest-lasting blooms also perish after blooming. Their flowers are their swan song.

Fresh blooms from about a month and a half ago.

Tall enough to be a super model.

The bloom (technically called an inflorescence) on my fang plant reaches almost six feet in height, which is astounding. It's a collection of symmetrical stalks with clusters of flowers at the ends. The radial symmetry is really quite... mathematical, as Finn and Jake would say.

Two separate plant bodies mean one survives.

This is my second kalanchoe to bloom. My first, which was tall, red, and gorgeous, bloomed all at once, which meant that I had to remove the entire plant (a rather large one) when it died soon after. My good luck in this case is that the fang plant had grown an offshoot which became it's own plant, and so even though this particular plant will die, the now-separated twin plant survives.

The plant loses nearly all leaves, leaving these strange gaps in its body.

Baby plant growing on the left side where a leaf formerly grew.

I'm extra-lucky in this case, as the fang plant generously decided to grow some baby plants on the flowering stalks. This happens with many succulents, but I haven't seen it on a kalanchoe before. At areas where a large leaf formerly grew, and on "crotches" where stems separate, the fang plant has grown little fuzzy green baby plants I will be able to pop off and root!

This is great, because I love this plant, and now I'll be able to spread it around the garden! It does pretty well with full sun (not all succulents do), and it will be nice to have some more of these fun and fuzzy plants.

Babies growing in crotches

Babies growing on the flower stalk where small leaves had grown and died.

The bloom/inflorescence today. Many flowers have died, some are still buds.

The large stem is the remains of the original plant's bloom.

For a little more context, I have some pictures of a different sort of kalanchoe my mother gave me. This particular plant bloomed and died, leaving an offshoot still attached to the dead flower stem, which I will need to remove with clippers. You can see the tall, dead stem next to the tiny left-over living plant. I left the stem on when I planted it in the ground as it gave me a very easy "handle" to move the plant with.

I haven't had this type of kalanchoe before, so it will be interesting to see what it grows into. I'm guessing that as I've planted it in full sun, it will be a nice red color, a guess supported by the red of the dead inflorescence.

Now that it's securely in the ground I can cut the dead stem down, if not completely off.