Spring Succulent Cutting to Optimize Propagation in Growing Season

Hello, this is Bethany at Gorgeous Gifts and it is time for me to do my spring plant preparation. So I'm going to go ahead and jump right in. This has gotten too tall for us to use in most of our arrangements. There's that aspect and it has also gotten big enough here that it is good size for a single plant. So what I want is to root this top part and I also want to save this stem. Decide first how I want this to look. Which leaves do I want to keep? I like that. So I'm going to go about an inch below these leaves here and then I'll cut it. So I'll go here and cut an inch below and I'm left with this. So I'm going to rock these off and I don't want to break the end of the leaf or expose flesh. That's why I carefully rock it off and try not to break that. Lay them in the tray, rocked off, makes a nice little clicking noise on most of these. So now I have this as my new top succulent. The roots will come out of here and while I'm waiting for roots to come, this part here will dry out and the water in these leaves will help roots come out of it. So come out of this spot right here. So I can leave this lay on a table. I usually set them in cups because they will continue to grow and I don't want them to reach for the sun or do anything strange if they're laying down on a countertop. So I try to put them in these cups when I can and then I just let that sit on my shelf until one day I pick it up and there are roots under it. Here is a top that I cut off that now has roots and it has been sitting in this tray I'm gonna say for three weeks. It is now the end of April in Ohio and this is when the plants, the succulents start to grow a little bit faster. So the roots come out faster, the babies come off the stems faster, these grow faster. Everything's just faster from April to October. So here's what I have left. I leave these leaves as a water indicator because when there's just a stem there, you don't need to water it very often at all and it's much more susceptible to getting over watered if you have just a stem and no way to tell if it needs water. So I try to leave a layer of leaves whenever I can. If I don't have a layer of leaves then I keep, I just try to water the stem very sparingly and you can actually squeeze stems to see if they're soft or not too. So this leaf here is a little flat. Maybe it exploded from taking up a little bit too much water. It's flat. It's got a yellowish color. That's what they usually look like. So this is not going to produce any babies. I'm not going to keep that one. That's just trash. This one also, same look. Don't want to keep that. So I only need probably four of these to check for whether the stem needs water. So I will take all of these off and turn them into leaf propagations. I think I'll leave that. That's how I'll leave it and I will put it under my tree on the north side of my house with all of my succulents. And when I move those out, I'll do a video and explain to you why and where and what. Next one. This has a pretty clear, very purple dense succulent right here. There's a little bit of a gap between this leaf and this one. So I'll probably take this one off. I'll probably take this one off and I'll keep these here. So if I'm taking this one off and this one off, this is the bottom of my succulent and I want to go about an inch below that. So and you could do no stem at all. I like to have a little stem so that I can easily stick it down into the soil without needing to put the soil all up on it, smashing it in there. So that's off and I don't need this one. Succulents with these really thick leaves like this, they propagate. Leaf propagations go so much faster when they're thick because there's so much water in here that's helping the roots come out and the baby grow on the end. I only keep the thick leaves anymore because the thinner ones take so long. So I like that. I might remove another leaf later, but for right now I can set that on the cup and wait for roots to come out of it. Here I have one leaf left here. I don't know if that's going to be a great water indicator because it looks like it has a little yellowish color to it and it may have been on its way out, but I'll leave. I guess I've got two leaves on here. I'll leave these two leaves on here. This one's pretty firm actually and I'll squeeze those to see if this needs water. This is the same as the first one that we did. I'm gonna say I'll keep this right here. That looks nice. So I'll go an inch below and trying to leave a couple of leaves here. So I left a couple here. I think these two will work. That one might not, but same deal. Rock these off. That looks good and it will wait there for roots to come out the bottom. I'll show you how that goes. This one, this is a stem. So last year at this time I cut one of these off the top right here and I left this stem and this one leaf that has been quite a champion here. Still firm and I'm gonna leave that same leaf to help me with the propagation this year. I'll keep from here up and this one has a lot of farina, this powdery coating on it. So I try not to touch them that much because they're so pretty when you don't touch them that much, but you kind of have to here. So there I'll hold it where I want to cut it. I don't even need to leave those leaves on there. Also this one is an awesome propagator by leaf as well as stem. Just awesome. This is a pacifidum blue haze. Super, super propagator because it's got these really chunky leaves, stores up a lot of water, supports itself very, very well. Put that in this little cup. Now when I see roots come out the bottom of these, I will put a little bit of water in the cups and let it graze the bottom of the stem so that roots will reach down to the water and hydrate it sooner. Then once I see a lot of roots, I move it to the dirt when I'm able, but it can sit in the water for a while. This is another pacifidum, another easy. I only kept the stem. I didn't keep a leaf on this one, so that's where I cut it last year, and this is what has grown. So I'm just going to take this little baby because I like to put these in little miniature arrangements. The smaller ones can be really fun for little bubbles. So I'm going to lay this one on this tray for a second. Now with these stems, I'm going to break off this dirt. There's a video on stem propagating where I make this dish here, where I'm going to show you in a little bit. But yeah, there's so much, so much fun things to show you here, so I get sidetracked a lot. We're going to keep cutting. This one is really great. I love how dense it is. I love the powder coating. I think the size is perfect. It's going to look awesome next to a fairy house. Sweet. So I'm just going to cut that right at the stem, and we have it. There is my new succulent, and it is cute. These are fun to put into planters. They always look great. These are always popular. I think I probably want to keep this. These also grow two heads on their stem almost every time that I've cut them. I almost want to grow stems just so that I can cut them, so that I can get two heads. It takes about a year, but I leave them on my shelf, and one day a customer walks by and says, that's cool, and we make it the centerpiece of their arrangement, which is really fun because you can't find things like this anywhere. So I'll leave those two leaves for squeezing to see if it needs water. Two pretty little purple heads will come off of that, and we'll treat it like a succulent, a purple succulent tree. We'll leave this stem here when I end up planting it in an arrangement, probably next year. Now this one is a mother plant here, and then this, there was something cut off of the edge of this which made this clump grow here, and I really like this clump, and I want to use it separate from this big one because when you put them together, it just doesn't angle right here. I'm knocking the leaves off here, so I need to find my cut spot in here where I can release these three that are growing, I think, on the same, yeah, there's just a stem here. I'm just going to cut it right, I'm going to cut it right below some roots that have started growing in there. If you see roots on the stem, you can still use them, and they can take up water a lot sooner. So this one, see if I can show you what I was seeing down there, that one had some roots growing out on the stem there, so this little cluster can drink now instead of waiting for roots to come out where I cut it. So I will suspend this over water to encourage some more robust roots, and then I will put it in a little dirt cup. When you're transferring things like this, you want to make sure you put it in just a little bit of soil, just one of these little two-inch cups or something similar. Let it get a more established root system before you pile on the soil in there, and really don't ever pile it on. Let's just forget I even used those words. You should let them fill up with soil or with roots. The soil fill up with roots, and then increase the pot size by about an inch, and you will be safe. Once those babies are gone, it's still a little big. I think I probably want to keep this row here. I'd like the succulent to be this, and I'd also like to keep the bottom row. Oh, there's a couple down there, so I can cut the stem. Nope, I'm gonna switch this over to the thread. Another thread cutting. This one has grown tall. I'm pretty excited to cut it because it's stem, because also it's a very nice stem. When they're thick, they produce more babies. They produce them faster. They're just stronger, so I really like having these nice thick stems, and I hope that multiple babies will grow on it. Who doesn't hope that they'd get multiple babies? I'll take this whole thing. I think it looks nice the way that it is. I don't need it to be any smaller. If I did want it to be smaller, I'd use the string so that I could thread it in here. Once again, I will tell you about that in a little bit when I get to the string cutting. So, we'll go about here. It's probably good. Here we go. We'll put soil in that when it gets roots. Perfect, and this pretty little lady. Some of these, this one in particular, it was stretched when I got it. It had this distance between the leaves. I wasn't a big fan of it, so I put it back on my work shelf, and I let it grow this more dense, this whole top succulent here is what I've been trying to grow, and I think it's at a great spot for cutting. So, I want to keep these around here, and I want to keep some leaves down here, so I will cut right there. When you look here, I got some extra leaves, so I will save those. Again, nice thick succulent. I'm going to have so many babies, and they are going to come quickly, and they're going to be cute as all get out. This is a baby tray here. I just set it there so that you could see the future of the leaves. I also have videos on propagating leaves. I should say again, because I haven't said it enough, before you do any of this chopping, you need to make sure that you water them. I came in last week, and I watered all of these things with the anticipation of chopping them this week, so they are nice and full of water. I want to keep probably this. This will be good. All right. I don't anticipate the leaves of this one being great propagators. Once again, throw them in the tray. It doesn't hurt anything. If they grow roots and little babies pop out, great. It's always fun to sprinkle them, the little tiny babies, into fairy garden gardens, literal gardens. We like to use them as vegetables, the little micro tiny things that grow on these. We'll see how that goes. See, this one I broke off. That leaf is not going to propagate that I broke off there. I'm not sure where it is in this dish, but it won't grow roots. When I realize that, I'll throw it out. The flesh was exposed here. It wasn't cracked off correctly. That eye is still in the end, so that leaf was no good, but that's okay. This is one that I cut a large rosette off the top of it last summer, and here is the cut spot where I cut the big one off. I used a thread, which we'll get to, and I used the thread so that I could leave these layers of leaves here, so that I could squeeze them and see when the stem needed water. All of these sweet babies grew out of the center of that. I don't know if I'm going to cut all of them. They grow the fastest while they're still attached to the stem. If they're not the size that I want them to be, I am not going to cut them. This one has roots. It's starting its own little root system here, right there. Since that's already there, I'm going to go ahead and cut right above the last root. Now I have those roots, and I can immediately put this in soil, and it will support itself, which is fantastic. There, I'll put soil in that, and this one might also have some roots up there, so we'll go right at its base. There, that has some roots growing. I mean, here's your sign. It's ready to go off on its own. Put that little tiny dry leaf, and I can put that straight in soil. It's ready to go. How exciting. This one's too small. I'm going to leave that one. This one's just right, so I am going to take it, and I don't see any roots up by the top of it, so we will just leave enough space for them to form here. These are all way too little. You can save them, and they might grow roots. They might grow babies, but I don't have time for how slow that's going to take with how small these are and how small they would be, but they're cute and fun, so if you want to do a little science experiment, you can keep those super tiny ones and compare how they do to larger leaves. I will keep this. Sometimes I recut it, but it's already got new babies coming on it. This is quite the baby growing stem that I have here, so I'm just going to leave it. Let it keep doing its thing. Maybe I'll mess with it later in the summer if I feel like that's a good idea. Okay, so I was going to keep this on this stem because it's not super long, and it kind of works, but there's a little pink spot on there where a new one is coming off of this stem, so I'm going to go ahead and take off this old one and let that new one come on out under my tree this summer since we've already got a good start on it. This one, this one does not have the growth that I prefer that it have on top, so I have a couple choices here. I could leave it here, put it in an ideal environment, make sure it's close to the south window, make sure it's close to the east window, or put it under my tree this summer in order to get a nicer, more purple, more dense growth going on up here before I cut it, but as I mentioned earlier, I do very much so enjoy how this particular stem will make multiple babies and turn it into a little purple tree, so I'm going to make that the plan for this, and I'm actually going to cut that stem again based on how I want it to grow. And I'll take this home and put it under my tree so that I can get some better growth from it before I put it out, so that'll go, that'll go home. Now this one, I know I'm going to get babies towards the top, so I'm going to make this a little bit smaller because I don't want to be quite so tall. Leave those leaves on so I know when to water the stem, wait for babies to come off the top. All right, this big guy, I have needed to cut this for so long, so long. This is one that I should have cut last year when I cut all of the other pachycephalums that I showed you. This was the same size as their mother plants were when I cut them. I don't know why I didn't cut this one, but it has gotten giant, and it's very heavy. I have to keep it in this big ceramic pot here. It falls over all the time, and it also has dropped a leaf and grown that baby down at the base there. Another one, I guess I cut something off there, must have been a two-headed one, and I cut one and not the other one. First step, I want this big guy to be my succulent, and I think I want to leave these out. These leaves are the leaves that I like to give to customers when they come, because they're very successful. They're very easy to propagate, and they can get the joy of you just tear it off like that, so you see the little eye, throw it in here. I know that my customers are going to be successful growing babies on these, so they're like my handout science projects that I just love the fact that they get to experience that. So this roots will come out of here. This flower will keep going. It's quite, it has been going for at least two months. It just keeps making them, and there's always about this size of flower on the end. They're so pretty, so that one will be a great addition to someone's planter very shortly. So here's what we've got left. Now I've got to decide what, how I want this stem to propagate. I don't really want it to be quite so big, and I like these leaves. I like to have them, so I'm just going to leave some good leaves to support the new growth. I'm going to say three or four is probably fine. So these are all, and you know what I have not done? Maybe I have done it, and I just don't remember. I haven't kept little slices of the stems like this. I'm going to keep this and see what happens with it. I'll just observe this. Oh, and you know what? I'm going to leave that leaf on there in case this grows roots, and then I can use that leaf to know if it needs water. How fun is that going to be to be determined in the future? So this is ready to go. I'm going to leave this baby in here. It seems to be pretty happy. I'll let it get big. I'll chop it when it's as big as I want it to be. I do need to do these quiddled and pendants, which are a whole other thing. These stems do root very easily in water. I like to have this thick growth here. That means it's been in the right sun. Thick, got some pink edges, has some farina on it. These are some stems that I kept last year to grow some new growth on them, and I got some new growth, so my goal has been accomplished. I will cut these with just a tiny little bit because I'm going to take this one. You can also put these straight in the soil. You just don't water it for a while. It'll move this. So these, I'll put like, I'll fill this whole top, put however many it takes, and this flower will still bloom. It's a really pretty little pink bell flower. So I will take that and this one. This is a pretty nice one here. I know that it's going to root right here. It's a nice cluster, very plump, lots of leaves. I think it'd be a great addition to this little planter that we're creating here. This one, and we'll just stick this one in here. These root extremely well. I have put saran wrap over a large bowl before, I mean a shallow bowl, but a wide one, and I put saran wrap over it, and I just poke a hole in it and put hundreds of these in it. The thing is, it's not necessary to do that. It does give you the peace of mind that there are absolutely roots before you put it in the soil, but I just know these leaves are nice and plump. I watered it last weekend for that purpose, so they're nice and full. They don't need anything. By the time they do need something, they'll have a little bit of roots, and I can water them like normal, especially during growing season. April to October, as I had mentioned, their roots come out very quickly, and by very quickly, I mean like two weeks instead of four or six. So, I have a whole bunch of these I need to cut, but these were a few that were on my shop block here. We'll just throw that one out. So, I'll keep this little stem. I have a pot of these coiled in stems, and we'll see what grows. Maybe a new one will start here. Maybe one will grow here. So, I keep them as long as things keep popping out of them, and this will get bigger as well. So, in the very least, I'll get one, two, three more nice thick ones, especially after they sit outside. This is another one. Coiled in pendants are also called cliffhangers. They do this, and they hang over the side. This is a nice arm. I'll keep the whole thing. I like it, so I'll make a pot and put that in it. It's got a flower already. That's fun. I'll put this in the same pot. If I had a pot here with dirt in it, I would go ahead and do that, but I don't. That one will go in the same pot. Make a nice little full ground cover until it turns into a spiller and comes out the side of the pot, and these are going to go in my stem pot. I'll let them progress a little bit more. This one, I think, is going to get nice growth on it just the way that it is, so I'll leave it undisturbed, and I'll let those grow more and add this to my stems so that they can get a little bit more robust. All right, so that's it for cutting with scissors. I'm going to take a minute here and get my string, and I'll show you how to cut with a string.