Good morning from the garden!

Remember the antique newspaper roller that I turned into a succulent planter last year?

It did really well out on my deck over that summer.

I brought it inside to overwinter it, but by spring it was starting to look a bit rough.

The succulents had all gotten either quite leggy or too big for the container.

Initially thought I would just pull everything out and start over.

So I picked up some fast-draining potting mix and a few new succulents.  But just as I was about to pull out the leggy succulents I thought, gee, this is a waste.  I really should try reviving some of them.

Now, I’m definitely no expert, so if you’re looking for the best advice on this process you may want to look further.  But I thought I’d go ahead and share the results of my efforts here anyway.

After a bit of online research, I discovered that succulents are theoretically really easy to propagate.  There are different methods, but I went with what looked the easiest to me.  That was simply cutting them off and then setting the cuttings aside for a few days to let the cut ends dry out.

That felt entirely bizarre to me.  Who would think that you can let a cutting just sit there for days without water or soil?  But after three days, they still looked perfect fine.

So I filled up some small plastic pots with the soil I’d purchased and simply pushed the cuttings into the soil.

I’m not sure where I went wrong with this process, but ultimately those two big succulents were the only ones that survived this method.  All of the smaller ones ended up with rotted stems.  It’s likely that was the result of too much water.  As I’ve mentioned (ad nauseum), we’ve had a lot of rain so far this summer and I had left these outside.

As a sidebar, I also planted five Amstel Netja Dark begonias this spring and every single one of them ended up rotting at the base as well.  That was despite zero watering on my part and pots with good drainage.  We just had so much rain!

Anyway, back to the succulents.  Although those cuttings didn’t make it, I did leave some of the cut off stems in the container.  And lo and behold, some of those sent out new plants.

I also left the bright lime green drapey succulent (sorry, I don’t know the name of this one) in place, even though it was looking a bit shabby, and it has bounced back beautifully.

I also added a few new succulents to the mix including this funky one …

I also wanted to add something dark to balance out that bright lime green.

And I had to add these next two just because I thought they were so sculptural.

In the end, I guess I was following that rule I talked about a couple of weeks ago of having each of the four colors of green, yellow, blue and red represented.

I really love how this succulent planter has turned out again this year, but I can’t seem to find the perfect spot for it in my garden.

For that reason, I put a price tag on it at my recent occasional sale.  It didn’t sell though.  Perhaps because I marked it $40 (after all I have at least that much into it, if not more).

So, I still have it.  In fact, I just pulled it inside because as I’m writing this post on Saturday there is a big thunderstorm rolling in.  More rain.  I’m trying not to drown this bunch of succulents.

I’ll keep carrying it around my garden looking for a spot that is worthy of it, but in the meantime I’m also listing on it on my ‘available for local sale‘ page just in case one of you locals has the perfect spot for an antique newspaper roller turned succulent planter.

Now, how about you?  Have you had luck propagating succulents?  What was your method?  Leave a comment and let me know.