ENHANCE YOUR INDOOR GARDEN WITH POTTED SUCCULENTS!
For an inexpensive, low-water use indoor garden, try succulents. These slow growers take little maintenance and come in different shades of green and in shapes ranging from spiky to oval, rounded, short, tall, and spiral to rosette.
Popular choices: Burro’s tail, hens-and-chicks, jade plant, ponytail palm, aloe vera, snake plant, string of pearls, ice plant, and moonstone plant.
How to plant:
- Choose a pot (ceramic is best) or creative container with a drainage hole.
- Remove nursery soil from the succulent.
- Remove any babies attached to the main plant.
- Put mesh (trimmed coffee filters work) over the drainage hole to keep the soil from falling out.
- Fill the pot almost to the top with cactus mix soil.
- Add the plant, nestle roots into the soil.
- Fill the pot with soil, leaving a tiny bit of room between the top of the soil and top of the pot.
- Make sure the leaves sit above the soil to prevent rotting.
- Add optional top dressing: gravel, rocks, sand, marbles.
- Let the arrangement sit for one or two days before you water it. This will give the roots time to heal before they soak up water, which helps prevent root rot.
How to care for them:
Most succulents prefer filtered bright light or shade. Use a diluted, well-balanced fertilizer once a year before the start of the growing season in the spring.
Succulents need to dry out between watering. Water every two weeks or so. If some show yellow in the summer due to high temperatures, give more water. Usually the yellow color disappears when temperatures cool down in the fall.
For tips on selection, watering, sunlight exposure, soil, fertilizing & propagating go to: www.plantcareforbeginners.com/articles/how-to-care-for-succulent-indoors
For more gardening tips: CVWD.org/conservation
