Questions about Succulents
Hi Peter (or cactus jungle person/s),
Here is a photo of my succulent. It is falling over! As you can see, I tried to tie it to a stake, which worked for a while, but now it’s tipping over again…
Also, the leaves at the bottom are one by one shriveling and falling off… but the top seems healthy and keeps growing!
What can I do?
Thanks so much,
Rachel
Rachel-
Your Graptopetalum is fine. In fact, it’s great! It’s growing nicely and has outgrown it’s pot. In the ground these will form a trailing stem along the surface and root where they touch and form new rosettes along the way. So in a pot it will want to hang down and swoop up. The only problem with that is the stem might break, which isn’t really a problem since the top cutting will then root easily enough and the bottom part will form new rosettes. In fact, you can choose to take the cutting yourself now rather than repotting into a bigger pot and letting it hang down and swoop up.
As for the bottom leaves – all succulents lose bottom leaves, so there’s nothing wrong here. In fact, you can pull off all the leaves along the trailing stem right up to the rosette if you want and plant them and within a year or two you’ll have a lot of baby plants.
Succulents do interesting things….
Peter
