Succulents

Many gardeners like using a potting mix that carries mycorrhizal fungi.  Some may even like to use a soil inoculant with their succulents and cacti.  Do mycorrhizal fungi also work with succulents and cacti? Succulents and cacti benefit from mycorrhizal fungi with better uptake of nutrients, water, and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. It improves the […]

When you see fine roots coming out of the stems of your Jelly bean plant (Sedum rubrotinctum), don’t panic!  Like many other succulents with stems, roots that grow above ground or “aerial roots” are fairly common. Although they are not bad for the plant, they are trying to tell you something about the plant’s health.

Removing the old soil off the root ball during repotting may damage fragile roots.  But it is not going to kill your plant.     In fact, there are situations when it is necessary to do so, especially when repotting succulents and for switching seedlings to a hydroponic system. In this article, we will go through

Succulents that flower are special, and those that exhale fragrance are even more so.  Scented succulents include many Mesemb species, night-blooming cacti, and Aloes from Madagascar.  Their flowers can range from tiny blooms with neon colors to large, showy flowers, and the fragrance is unusual, ranging from overwhelmingly spicy, to sweet perfumes resembling coconut, honey,

If you think succulents are the cutest thing ever, you will love the ones with furry, velvet-like leaves that are covered in tiny white hairs. The white fuzzy outgrowths on leaves and stems are “trichomes”, which can be short, fine threads, or tufts of hair branching out like a star. They serve to protect the

It is a fun DIY project to assemble a garden of tiny succulents inside a terrarium.  The challenging part though is to figure out what soil to use in a non-draining, non-breathable glass container without drainage holes.  Even more difficult is to create a terrarium that lasts not only a few months, but many years

Instead of pouring water from above, many people like to water their houseplants, including orchids, from the bottom.  Is it also better for watering your indoor succulents? Bottom watering is not only an alternative to watering from above. Bottom watering is actually necessary to keep succulents hydrated and alive especially when the soil gets too compacted

Have you had succulents sending out a long flower stalk ready to bloom for the first time? Could this also be the last time?  Could this possibly be a “death bloom”?    A death bloom is one single flower stalk that shoots up vertically from the apex of the plant only once in its lifetime.  Succulents such

Do you know that you can change the color of your succulents by simply giving them some stress such as sun stress?  In fact, many nurseries use this technique to add unique, pretty colors to their plants so as to sell at a higher price.  Giving your succulent stress does not necessarily mean that you

Succulents are such versatile plants that can be grown indoors and outdoors.  But how much light do your succulents need, so that they don’t suffer from too little light indoors or too much light outdoors? Succulents grow to their best compact form, leaf size, and healthy pigmentation under filtered light of 75-150 μmol/m2/s for 4