succulent propagation - what's your favourite/best method?

mikeymustard

Partly thanks to the long, hot and dry summer playing havoc with my containers, I've been growing and propagating some succulents, particularly the echeveria-like types. It's fascinating how easily these things root from such a small part, and the little babies they produce are cute as!

I've tried various ways with varying levels of success; I'd love to know what you experts out there in GW land consider the best methods, and do different species have favourite ways of being propagated?

strelitzia32

(Not an expert!) I have a lot of different haworthia, they're the only succulent I really like. I either take the offsets or, on rare occasion, propagate from a leaf. As far as I know there's only one way of doing it, but I bet someone has a trick that's more reliable. I cut off a leaf (or tidy the end into a clean cut if it's ragged for any reason). I'll put it upside down around the edge of a pot, so the cut end is fully in the air. Wait a few days for it to create a callous, then flip it round and plant it. I find microrhyzal rooting powder makes zero difference, just a very free draining mix is all you need (I make up one third compost, perlite, grit).

Takes ages though, and I have stacks of offsets, so I generally just use those. 

mikeymustard

strelitzia32 said:

 As far as I know there's only one way of doing it, but I bet someone has a trick that's more reliable....

I've not tried haworthias yet, I must give them a go. I've rooted echeveria, graptopetalum, pachyphytum, sedum and one or two hybrids of these. Sedum is hardly a challenge, even to me! Basically do something - or nothing, the result seems to be a new plant!

There are vids online showing methods of rooting leaves in (or almost in) water, that I've tried but are a bit of a faff; maybe if you live somewhere that has very little humidity it might be more effective. So far I've found just popping them on top of some very sandy, dry soil (from our allotment) mixed with perlite, and then left in the windowsill for a couple of weeks does the trick, though actually planting them in the soil seems to produce bigger babies and quicker, it's just not as much fun when you can't see the little plantlets til they break ground!