I’ve been having difficulty with my echeveria recently. she was given to me as a gift and had a bit of a rough car ride in her way to me. I repotted her in fast draining soil with lots of rocks at the bottom, but she kept losing her lower leaves even after the ones that were damaged on the car ride shriveled up and fell off. she was doing better for a little while when we finally got our grow light set up, but after about a month, her lower leaves started drooping again.
they’ve turned almost leathery and aren’t falling off the stem anymore, but the upper leaves are doing fine and really enjoying the grow light.
do you have any ideas or suggestions?
(I know I need to let her have her own pot, but I don’t currently have enough room for all my babies)
Hi! So what you have is an Echeveria Perle von Nurnberg. A notoriously light hungry species of Echeveria. The down turned leaves and stretching of the stem is a very obvious sign of a lack of light, so good job on that grow light! Her new growth is looking fantastic. When a succulent gets etiolated like this the old growth never recovers and wont perk back up no matter how much light you give it, only the new growth will grow in upright and compact. Growing so tall does end up having the plant use up lower leaves for nutrients faster than it would if it was growing compact. So the taller it gets the more lower leaves seem to shrivel up.
Repotting can also cause leaves to be used up as the plant reestablishes roots that may have been hurt in the repotting process. So that’s completely normal.
Because this is such a light hungry plant if you’re still seeing the new growth that comes in starting to downturn you may need to move the grow light even closer for her to be satisfied.
Now for other suggestions: Your soil. It’s looking very organic and doesn’t actually look very well draining to me at all. Rocks/stones at the bottom of a pot also does not create more drainage, it actually raises the soil water saturation line and leaves the bottom of the roots wet for longer. If the pot has a drainage hole the best way to increase drainage is actually to mix those rocks in with your soil like cookie dough. Any commercial succulent soil is going to be too organic and moisture retentive and I always cut mine half/half with more perlite or pumice, or just straight up gravel works too! The coarser the better, so smooth pebbles and things aren’t the best. If you repot her into this more well draining mix you’ll want to be sure to remove all of the old soil, better soil won’t do anything if the roots are still surrounded and suffocated by the old stuff.
Since the grow light is helping her stay more compact and the old growth is going to stay tall like that forever lots of people behead their plants to “reset” them. This is where you literally chop off the head of the plant and that cutting will regrow roots in time. To do this you need a clean knife and you pick a point to chop. Then you let that cutting dry and callus over wherever you’d like for a day or so, on a paper towel out of the way. Once it’s dry you can set it in/on some dry soil and just wait. Don’t give it any water until there’s roots. Once there’s roots I usually water about once a week until it becomes a bit more established and then I water less and less frequently going to watering once every 2-3 weeks.
When you behead the stem of the plant left behind is also able to keep growing!! Leave a few leaves on it but remove the majority, those leaves can be propagated on their own too. Keep treating that stem as normal. Eventually little rosettes will start growing from where you removed the leaves and you’ll have many more babies to grow.
So all in all I think your plant is pretty healthy, I would suggest changing that soil asap as it can cause problems in the long run if not gritty enough. Beheading is definitely your choice and you’re not hurting your plant if you leave it tall. I hope this has helped! If you have more questions or concerns or didn’t understand something feel free to message me! :)
