Succulents come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colours which implies that they come with varying conditions and need to do well. A number of them thrive indoors, while others have a liking for cold mountain climates.
While making a choice of how best to care for your succulents, it is critical to know the different types of succulents and their varying needs.
So, do succulents need direct sunlight? Based on their native climate, genus, and colour, succulents need varying amounts of sunlight. Typically, they enjoy 6 – 8 hours of sunlight a day. Nonetheless, your newly succulent is likely to develop brown spots or even die if they get exposed to too much direct sunlight.
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How to Care for Succulents Indoors
Growing succulents indoors can be a bit difficult. Nonetheless, with the following simple tips, you will be able to better care for your indoor succulents:
1. Do Succulents Need Direct Sunlight Indoors?
When succulents are growing indoors, it is often difficult for them to receive sufficient sunlight. When grown outdoors, they typically need an average of 6 hours of bright, indirect sunlight every day.
Nonetheless, when grown indoors, you would want to position your succulents close to a window that receives light all day. If this is not possible, put your succulents close to the brightest window or brightest area of your office or home.
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2. Watering Your Succulents
One of the most difficult challenges new succulent growers encounter when taking care of their succulents is watering. Succulents require a good amount of water to do well. Nonetheless, they do not like to be watered as frequently as most indoor plants.
Your succulent would like to have its roots soaked with water but then dry out quickly.
Thereafter, water it again after the soil has been dry for a few days.
Lightly spraying your succulent with water can help them survive for a period. But if you would like them to do well, you can follow the “soak and dry” method.
Avoid watering your succulents daily – this can be the quickest way of killing them.
3. Propagating Your Succulents
You can propagate stretched and leggy succulents to regain normal appearance again. But how can this be done? Well, this is what we will be covering in this section.
It is easy to propagate succulents. For instance, when you have a succulent cutting, there are only 3 things you need to do:
1. Plant your succulent in the soil
2. Wait for your succulent to grow a callus on the section that was cut away from the parent plant
3. Water your succulent
You can apply the same process if you have leggy succulent. To harvest a good succulent cutting, cut the top off your succulent, get rid of some of the bottom leaves on the stem, and allow the stem to dry for two days.
When you get rid of the bottom leaves from the stem, keep them around and let them dry for two days as well.
Succulent leaves are full of moisture – and so, often, they grow their own roots.
After two days, you can plant the top of your succulent and the leaves in the soil and water your plants. After several weeks, your leaves and cuttings should grow their own roots.
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Propagating Succulents in Water or Leca
If you do not want to propagate your succulents in soil, leca or water are great alternatives. The process is almost similar to growing succulent cuttings in soil:
1. Let the cutting callus off
2. Put the callused off part of the cutting in the water
3. Give it time to grow roots
It will take several weeks before the roots grow, since succulents are slow-growing plants, even in leca or water.
4. Fertilizing a Succulent
If you want your plant to grow more quickly, you can supply it with fertilizer. In a way, this also works for succulents.
Although not necessary, you could fertilize your succulent once per month.
Alternatively, you could fertilize it once annually, at the beginning of the growing season (spring).
Succulents are slow-growing plants – therefore, adding fertilizer may help a little to speed their growth.
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5. Appropriate Soil for Your Succulent
Succulents love dry environments.
One of the ways you can attain this is by using a well-draining soil mix. The ideal soil for your succulent should drain water quickly so that your succulent does not sit in water for too long.
The best soil mix is a cactus or succulent soil mix.
And by the way, you can prepare your own soil mix by adding large grains, sand or perlite to your soil. This ensures that water gets drained quickly from the soil.
