Succulents!

Ok, I was going to talk about my 3 ficus benjamina friends, but I was thinking about my succulents so I decided to post about my collection of them instead. 

I have a thing for succulents. I’m don’t quite remember when it started, but I remember seeing a plant that was just incredibly perfect…it looked like something that someone of great skill hand-crafted, rather than something organic. I think it was an Echevaria Elegans like the one in this photo. I fell in love.

I had quite a bit of my collection at work, but the lack of light on the weekends caused me to lose one of my jades and caused the others to stretch up and lose their beautiful, compact forms. I took them home and mounted a plant light below the cabinet to ensure they get enough light each day. For the ones that became the most straggly, I popped the leaves off and put them in rooting medium to start new plants. This mini muffin tin worked really well to set them in while I let the cuts heal over. In the center, you can see my echevaria lola, which looked just like the one in the picture above, but stretched out from lack of light.  I popped all the leaves of to start again. the top had a perfect form, so I planted it in its own pot.

Here is my collection as it is today. The beauty of succulents in that you can always pop a leaf off and start a whole new plant. Often, they will drop leaves on their own and you can just pop them into soil once the wound has crusted. I’m hoping to start exchanging cuttings with friends who are also interested in propagating succulents. (Yes, there is a cactus and a pony tail palm thrown in there, but they are part of the succulent family.)