So I’ve been busy for the past month or so with work and art and the like, but also plants! I’ve been gradually gathering various plants because apparently that’s something I do now too. Most of them are succulents, which are rad, in fact here they are from when I pulled them back in to the main room when it was very snow-y at late February.
So I figured I’d give propagating some a try! The red and green pals on the bottom shelf were pretty leafy so I thought I’d have a go at propagating them. I was a little worried about harming them as the way to do it is by pulling their leaves off! Though the other two ways actually involve taking enough leaves off to cut the stem, plant the stem after it dries out and planting that, while leaving the stump to regrow.
But the way I’m doing it involves taking the leaf and letting the end dry out (if you do it correctly!) then just leave them be, watering them occasionally. I got a tray with some kind of weird bio-sponge that apparently allows better chances of seeds etc. germinating or cuttings root. I thought it was soil at first but ho-hum. If it can encourage cuttings and seeds, I’m sure it’ll be fine for the leaves when they root!
Not the best photo of the leaves there but hey! It was two from the red plant and two from the green plant, because my flash was one and I didn’t notice when took it but ho-hum. Unfortunately the leaf on the right wasn’t the correct kind of pull, I’d damaged the base of the leaf and it didn’t seal up correctly, so it kind of just became a gooey mess. And that was it for almost three weeks! Nothing really happened then I noticed suddenly…
You can just about see a tiny red root there. Which has quickly grown, this was it three days ago. You can just about see a super thin red stip sticking out, which I assume will be the plant’s first leaf?
And this is it today! In three days the root has grown really big and it’s surprising how quickly it’s managing it!
With the rate it’s going, I wonder if it will actually root in to the not-soil, I’m pretty excited! Unfortunately the red leaf doesn’t seem to be showing signs of life yet, but if the smaller one took three weeks to start growing, the larger one may just need longer! I hope so as I actually like the red one more >_> Even if it does keep doing this:
It’s just turning towards the sun but it’s doing it super extremely. But it’s such a rad plant so that’s okay.