Cleaning Up Savvy Succulents

CLEANING UP SAVVY SUCCULENTS

Not all of the succulents we planted last season sold so we have some holdovers here in the greenhouse.  Some of them are rather lanky and too top heavy, causing the container to fall over.  Essentially they are overgrown and need to be cut down to size.  

The Pig's Ear succulent above is so heavy that the container won't stand up.  Who's going to purchase a plant like this?  I'm pretty sure nobody.  You know from my previous posts about Jade and Aloe plants that it is relatively easy to take a large parent plant and make many offspring.  However I have never propagated other succulents so some research was in order.  It turns out that it's just as easy to work with these other succulents.

First I fill 15 3.5" pots with our standard potting mix.  I also moisten the soil before I begin so it is easier to stick the cuttings in each pot.

I cut one of the ends of a branch off of a Pig's Ear plant in very much the same way I would trim a Jade plant.  In researching these plants I learned that Pig's Ear is native to South Africa and that the fleshy part of the leaf can be applied to warts and corns as a medicine.  Eating the leaves can also help you if you have parasitic worms.  Who would have known?  But don't give it to your dog because it contains a chemical that could be toxic.  Wow. 

 Next up was the Campfire Crassula variety.  This has Crassula right in the name so you know right off the bat it's a type of Jade plant.  This particular one has leaves that turn reddish, hence the Campfire part of the name.  In doing my research I learned that sometimes you can harvest seeds off the flowers that these plants produce.  So I took one of the flowers and shook it into the palm of my hand.

 I'm not sure if any of the debris in my hand are seeds but there was one thing I saw that made me stop what I was doing and head to my pesticide cabinet.  There was a thrips in the palm of my hand.  A thrips is a tiny insect that feeds on plants by puncturing them and sucking out all of the good stuff from their cells.  It's pretty common to find them in a greenhouse environment but if they get out of control you can have some serious problems on your hands. They can cause scars on leaves and damage flowers.

After being in this line of work for a while I know just the insecticide to get the job done.   Tristar's active ingredient is Acetemiprid which targets the nervous system of insects and causes paralysis.  Controlling thrips can be a challenge because of their different life cycles but I have found that Tristar does a very respectable job of controlling the population.

Looking back in my pesticide log I see that I should use 1 teaspoon of Tristar concentrate for 1 gallon of water in the sprayer.  After mixing that up I pour a tiny "glug" of Capsil which is a product that will help my insecticide solution to be sprayed more evenly on the leaves.  Since I made a gallon of mix I decide to spray everything in the greenhouse just to be safe.  And I still have a lot of left.  I'm sure I'll be using it again in the near future.

Back to my cleaning up of the succulents.  Where was I?  Oh yes, Campfire Crassula.  I decide to cut off the new growth that is coming from the base of the plant and leave alone the long lanky stems that are causing the plant to fall over.  I've decided that to make my life easier the parent plants are going to end up the trash and I'll just grow all new young ones.

Here is a cutting I took from the Campfire Crassula.  I'm taking so many cuttings that I had to fill another 15 pots with soil.  It's more than I had anticipated but I'm having fun.

Now this is an interesting one.  This is the only Firesticks I have left over but something needs to be done with it because again, it's growing all lopsided and I don't think it has much value to a customer looking for a nice houseplant.  It turns out that I can propagate Firesticks by taking cuttings just like any succulent, however I need to be aware of the milky sap in the stems because it can cause burns!  Imagine that.  The Aloe Plant helps to heal burns but this other succulent with the scientific name Euphorbia tirucalli causes burns.  I was warned especially to not get the sap in my eyes.

This is what it looks like after cutting off a branch.  You can see the milky sap at the end which my fingers are definitely avoiding.  I insert a few stems like this into several pots and I'm just about done with this little clean up project.

Now that looks much neater than the mess of succulents I started with.  I've ended up with 45 new plants!  Since I've never tried to propagate these varieties before I'm going to assume I just leave them alone and let them do their own thing.  I'll probably water them once a week or as needed and let them form roots.  Hopefully they will be ready for sale in a short time.
 

And finally this is my basket of overgrown plants that I decided to trash.  Sorry guys but it's time for the next generation to step in.

Until next time...