Transcript:
Hey, everyone today. We are talking all about stretched out succulents, so what causes stretched out succulents how to take an arrangement that has stretched out succulents in it and make it look great again and then also how to prevent stretching in the future, Let’s start by talking about what causes stretching most succulents need a pretty substantial amount of sunlight in order to maintain really compact growth. The arrangement that we’re looking at here has been growing for about two years. It’s had a good amount of water, but at various points in time, it hasn’t been getting enough. Sunlight lack of sunlight is what causes stretching in succulents, but you’ll notice that the stretching is not consistent between the different varieties of succulents. We have in the arrangement, and that’s because all succulents need different amounts of sunlight, so the cactus, for example, even though it needs a lot of sunlight to maintain compact growth, it doesn’t grow as quickly, so the stretching isn’t going to be as noticeable on the other hand. This crassula or Jade. It stretches really quickly without a lot of sunlight because it grows so quickly, so it’s gotten really tall and branching you, which is something that James do naturally, but the leaves are so spaced out because it didn’t get enough light. This Kalanchoe Tomentosa is also a little bit stretched out, but as you can see, its leaves are not spaced out quite as much as the Jade. On the other hand, this watch-chain crassula is extremely stretched out. It is a really fast grower that needs a lot of sunlight, so being somewhere that’s shaded. Even part of the day is not going to be great for this plant. The ideal location for this would be somewhere that gets. Sun all morning up until about noon or one oclock and then really bright shade throughout the rest of the day that will help this maintain a really low compact growth and all of the plants will look healthy. I want to focus for a minute on this echeveria in the front. You’ll notice it not looking like its regular rosette shape. And if you look at this stem right along here, you’ll see that it’s curved one of the first signs that a succulent is not getting enough sunlight is it’ll start to bend toward the brightest light source. In the case of this echeveria. The brightest light source was actually behind it and so the plant was turning and trying to reach around to get the most sunlight possible. If you’re growing succulents indoors, it’s really difficult for your succulents to get as much light as they need. Ideally, you would place your succulent’s next to a window. Get that gets bright sunlight throughout the whole day. Usually a south-facing window or an east or west facing window are gonna be best for this now. Even if your succulent is in a bright window, that’s getting sunlight all day. You’re probably still gonna notice. I’m stretching, especially at the times of year where your succulent is growing. The most in order to prevent that stretching, You can move your succulents outside, so they get more sunlight naturally, or you can use a grow light to supplement the daylight. Just leave the grow light on at the same times of day that you’re getting natural sunlight, and you’ll notice that your succulents will grow more compact now. I want to show you what to do when your succulent arrangement looks like this. Where it’s kind of overgrown. It looks a little straggly and just needs some refreshing. The most important thing to remember is after you’ve refreshed your arrangement. You need a place at somewhere. That’s gonna get more sunlight. Otherwise, the stretching will come right back and kind of counteract all that hard work that you just did to get the arrangement looking great again. Let’s talk about what you need in order to refresh your succulent arrangement. You really don’t need that much, but having a few things on hand will make a big difference. The most important thing you need to have is a pair of really sharp and sterile pruning scissors. You can use regular scissors, but I really like these pruning scissors. They’re very sharp, and it makes it really easy to get a clean cut with the succulents. Depending on the size of your succulent, you may also want to have a sharp knife on hand again. You’ll want to make sure it’s sterile, so you don’t cause any sort of infections or problems with your succulents, another thing that comes in handy, a chopstick. I have a bunch of these from Banzai Jack. Because he sends one with every soil order. So I’ll have one of these next to me while I’m working. The other thing that you may want to have is a top dressing You’ll notice as we refresh these arrangements that I do have a top dressing on all of my arrangements, and basically it’s just a decorative rock that helps the arrangement look finished. I do also use a scoop to help me get that in place. You could also have a funnel or just use your fingers. The last thing you might want to have on hand are just some succulent cuttings. We’re gonna be cutting off a lot of plants from the arrangements themselves and we’ll put them back in, but if some of your succulents have died or if you want to just fill in any gaps, it’s nice to have a few extra plants on hand for a lot of people trimming their succulent arrangement is a really scary thing, but the great thing about succulents is that when you cut off the top of a plant, it usually forces new growth to come off on the lower portions. So you’re really going to get more plants out of it instead of ruining the ones that you have. The first thing you want to do is decide what succulents need some work and what succulents are going to leave a loan so in the case of this arrangement. I’m gonna leave the cactus. As is. It looks really good, so there’s. Nothing really, that needs to be done with it. This crassula in the front and also these along the edge, they look a little overgrown and not rain managed so. I’m definitely going to be doing something with those, and then I’m also going to clean up this echeveria so essentially, the cactus is the only thing that’s gonna stay in place. Everything else we’re gonna either cut off the top. Maybe pull it out completely, but we’re definitely gonna be doing some trimming this watch-chain crassula over here. It looks like the roots are pretty established in there so rather than pull it out and kind of disrupt the whole arrangement. I’m just gonna cut off the top. You can see. I just cut it right down to the bottom, and there’s a few little pieces in there and we’ll just leave those in and at the moment. I’m not gonna put anything back in. I want to get the arrangement cleaned up before I add more to it or put things back in the other thing to note Is that when you are cutting off your succulents? You’ll want to make sure this end heels or scabs over dries out before you put it back in the arrangement. It really depends on where you live. Some people will just stick them right back. In and as long as you don’t water and the soil stays dry for a couple days. Your cutting should be just fine, but as a general rule, you want to wait for it to dry and then put it back in the soil now. I’m gonna remove the dead leaves from this echeveria so I can see for sure what’s going on now. I have a really bare stem right along here. And then the main rosette has these kind of yellowing leaves, but then you’ll notice there’s also a new rosette this other side, so I think what I’m gonna do is actually cut off the whole thing, right at the base that way we have just the rosette to work with, and we can kind of plant it. However, we want the new roots will come off this stem, so I could even lay it flat like this when I put it back in the arrangement and new rosette should form along this base plant as well, so Im. Just gonna leave that in there. I’ll probably cover it up so that you don’t see the bare stem for a while. When the new plants start to grow. I’m also going to pull off the dead leaves from this succulent and personally, when I work with cactus, I like to use varieties like this. That have really long thorns that way. I’m not worried about getting tiny little thorns stuck in my fingers and as you can see. I’m not working with gloves, but when I do work with the cactus itself, I actually wear two layers of nitrile dipped gloves to keep my fingers protected. You can see. I have one little rosette coming off here and it doesn’t look bad, but it have a really long bear stem, So I’m just gonna go ahead and cut that, and I’m just gonna immediately stick this right back in the soil. This is where your chopstick will come in handy. You can kind of make a little hole in the soil and stick the cutting inside. I think I’m also going to cut off the top of this Kalanchoe II. It doesn’t look horrible, but I want everything to be lower, and I want the cactus to be the main focus, so with this, I’m also going to pull off just a couple of the leaves, and this particular succulent you can actually propagate those leaves, so I’ll save those and put them in my propagation tray, and I’m just gonna stick this right back in there. You’ll notice that I left a leaf on the stem That allows the base plant to still get the sunlight that it needs and it doesn’t look quite as goofy when the rosette is sitting next to it, all right. I’m gonna go ahead and cut down this crassula that I had, and we’ll stick it in right here in the front and you’ll notice I’m kind of putting the plants back to where they came from originally, and that’s because I liked the design and kind of the arrangement how it was, so I’m just gonna try and get it back to its original. Look and feel with this watch-chain. It is kind of tricky to plant when it’s in a bunch of strands like this, So I’m just gonna throw some of the cuttings right here inside the original plant, so it’ll look a little more green, and then these will eventually take root and grow on their own now. I decided I do want to put this echeveria back in, but it just looks a little goofy the way it is, so I’m gonna flip it over, and I’m gonna see if I can actually just cut off the big rosette right here that looks good and leave all of the original plant on a different piece of stem, so you can see. I kind of dissected that there and the great thing is this will grow just like it is, so I’m going to cut off part of the stem. So you don’t see that sticking out. Pull off a couple more dead leaves in there and then. I’m gonna just set this right on top. Something you have to be careful about with working with a cactus. Is this will actually stick into some of the plant leaves, So I actually just speared through one of these. I can vary leaves, but it will be just fine now. This plant had been left alone for about two years and so some of the plants did die over the course of that time. So I’m gonna go in and put in just a few of the cuttings that we talked about earlier and I’m going to just clear off the stem, so I’ve got something to work with and we’ll stick those in . You can plant your arrangement as tight or as spaced out as you want. I’m gonna leave some of the top dressing showing here. I don’t want this to be like completely filled in, but I do want it to look like it’s a full arrangement. So I have some green going in here. The green from the Echeveria kind of mimics the green from this sedum and were kind of creating a trail of the crafts love there. So this is looking pretty good. You might stick in one. More of these sedum X, and the sedum will also propagate from leaves, so I can save those and stick them on my propagation tray and when you’re working with cuttings, they fall out sometimes it’s not really normal. Alright, so there we have our cleaned up arrangement and the top dressing actually looks really good so. I don’t think I’m going to worry about adding any more in to this one so well. Just leave it at that. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe. We’ll see you next time. you!