Stick it in the ground and it will grow.
For most plants, this holds true. But it is especially evident when it comes to succulents and cacti. All you need to know is 3 things:
And there you are, the basics for propagating most succulents and cacti.
Let me go into a bit more detail.
So when I first started propagating succulents and cacti I didn’t really know what clean cuts were. For cacti and succulent stem cuttings, it basically means: be mindful to try and take the least jagged cuts possible. A smooth cut is best. It helps the plants sit better in soil, in my opinion. But it’s not a deal breaker. I once broke off a cactus pad with the smallest ounce of finesse and that pad is growing perfectly.
Clean cuts are more important when it comes to leaf cuttings. Basically you want to make sure that when you snap off a leaf that no part of the leaf is still left on the stem. The cells that create new growth are generally found at the base of the leaf, so without them, your leaf is just going to shrivel up and die.
Nobody wants to go into the ocean with an open wound – the salt, the water, the bacteria, the death. So keep that in mind when propagating, because succulents and cacti don’t want to be shoved into dirt with an open cut. Give succulents a few days to harden over when taking stem and leaf cuttings. If you can still see a bit of an open wound, the soil is not ready for that succulent jelly.
For cacti, I like to leave them to callous over for a week or more. They are generally larger than succulents and understandably need more time to callous over cuts.
Putting these plants in the ground prematurely will just lead to rot, killing a perfectly good cutting in the process.
The moment you take a cutting, you are dealing with a fragile plant. These cuttings need to be treated like city folk who wouldn’t be able to survive 1 hour in the outback alone. Let cuttings callous over in the shade, and let them start their first stages of propagation in the shade.
I won’t acclimate my leaf cutting babies to the sun until their mother leaf has died off. And even then, I will be exposing them to the sun in short bursts. There’s no point going through all the trouble to propagate plants, only to let the sun kill them off.
So there you have it. The basics to propagating succulents and cacti.
The basics to propagating succulents and cacti! Stick it in the ground and it will grow. For most plants, this holds true. But it is especially evident when it comes to succulents and cacti.
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