Transcript:
Hey, guys, welcome back to my channel. In today’s video, we’re going to take a look at an over, watered succulent and how to save it. Okay, so here’s the succulent that I got on sale at Lowe’s for a dollar, It’s a Graptivaria opolina, and as you can see, it has mushy dark leaves and also yellowing soft leaves. So as soon as I saw this, I knew that it had been over watered just by looking at the soft, mushy leaves, the soft yellowing leaves and then the kind of mushy dark leaves, so our mission today is to save the Scraptoberria opalina so what I’m going to do is remove those leaves, so those are rotting, so we’re just going to remove all of that, so I’m just putting on my gloves to try to prevent the oils from my fingers from touching the farina because it’ll wipe off that powdery white coating from the leaves, which is its natural sun protection, So I’m just gonna gently Shake that out of the pot and yes, the soil is absolutely soaked in there. So now what we’re going to do is just loosen all that soil away from the roots. So the first thing you want to do is remove all that wet soil, and I know that normally you don’t want to be, you know, potting a succulent into wet soil or you don’t want to be watering it right away. Basically, you don’t want to be messing with its roots when it’s wet, right when they’re wet. But in this case, we’re on a mission to save the life of this succulent and what’s killing it right now is that wet, damp soil that is basically suffocating the roots and drowning it, so what you want to do is just get rid of as much of that wet soil as possible, especially if it’s in a pure peat or a very heavy peat soil. I’m just going to remove this other kind of yellowing leaf, so when you’re doing a rescue, the idea is to first remove the problem. So the problem would be the wet soil and then also remove any infected parts of the plant, so that’s why we inspect the roots and remove any that are dead or rotted and then also check the stem, make sure that’s not soft if it was soft and we would be cutting it above the rot and we can save part of the plant or you could always save the healthy leaves, and you can propagate the plant, you know, more plants from the leaves, and then you only want to be left with healthy tissue, healthy plant tissues so healthy, nice fresh leaves nice, healthy, white roots and a good, healthy firm stem. So once you’re left with that, you’re just gonna let your succulent just dry out and you can let it dry out for a day overnight or you can give it a few days. It depends on your climate and how fast everything dries out. So as soon as you realize, you have a succulent, that’s been over watered, or if you’re doing a rescue, you know, if you happen to be in a garden center and you see them on clearance and you want to rescue them. This is the method that I do, and so it seems to work most of the time. Most of the time I’m able to save these succulents. Occasionally, one might be too far gone and the rot may be already into the stem and up too high, but even if the rot has already gotten up the stem, you’re normally still able to save the leaves, and you’re able to propagate from those, so it just depends on how what, like what part of the plant is still healthy now. If you want to save the pot because you want to reuse it, you can do that. You just need to disinfect it first. Since it has had. You know that soggy wet soil and it has, you know, had the bacteria forming and you know, the rot starting in there, you want to disinfect it really well before reusing it on a new healthy plant. So what I would do is wash this in warm, You know, warm, soapy water, so you can use dish soap and you can also disinfect it with bleach. Some people prefer to use bleach because it kills everything. If you don’t like bleach, you can always use hydrogen peroxide and spray that in there. Really, we’ll let that sit on there and you can also leave them out in the sunlight, too, and let that you know, after you wash it, you know, you can let it sit out in the sun afterwards to further help disinfect, um, so just a few options with being able to reuse those pots so now we’re going to be storing our succulent for the next few days while it’s drying out and you can store it inside or outside, it’s totally up to you either way. Make sure it’s not exposed to direct sunlight because that can sunburn it, and also it’ll make the roots dry out a little too much. So at this point, the healthy roots still have a chance to be able to come back and survive if it has direct sunlight hitting it, they might get too desiccated and too dehydrated and end up dying, so we’re just going to let it dry out gently and slowly over time in the shade in a cool dry location, So I’m going to be storing mine inside the house and I’ll check it every day and as soon as I feel like, it’s ready to be potted, then I’ll be back here with you, guys and we’ll pot it up. All right, good morning. Guys, it’s a beautiful Sunday morning out here. We’re going to be potting up our Graptoveria opalina. Today it’s had a few days to dry out, and it’s all completely dry now, so we’ll go over some of the stages of root rot caused by over watering and what that looks like. And at what point are you still able to save your plant? So we’ll go over that in just a little bit here, but first, let’s go ahead and finish taking care of our graftoveria opalina now. I think that this plant is okay. I don’t think that it has root rot at this point. I think it was just over watered, but to find out the difference, you know, because you might be unsure about your plants at home, so if you have a plant that, you know, it’s been over watered, and you’re not sure if it’s at the point of crossing over to just being over, watered into actual root rot. What we can do is rinse those roots out. Okay, so we’re gonna be rinsing away the soil from the roots and the stems, so we can get a better look at what’s going on here and just make sure there’s no root rot happening, so I’m just gonna dip my roots and stim into the water here and just wiggle away, and this is just a nice, gentle way to do this too. So yeah, you could be at your faucet or using your hose to spray away some of the soil. Um, just try to be a little bit gentle because the roots, you know, you want to keep those as intact as possible. I know what we’re doing, probably seems a little counterproductive, taking an overwater plant and dipping it into water right now dipping its roots in there, but our main goal here is just to see what’s happening at the roots. Okay, so now we’re able to see a little more, What’s going on in here and it actually looks really healthy, so I think we’re going to be good. There’s no darkness or softness at the stem, so what we’re doing is just examining the roots, and we want to see white healthy roots. So when you see white roots, those are nice, healthy root tissue. If you see brown roots or soft or mushy roots, those are rotted roots, and so you want to remove any rotted roots, so we’re just going to look down the length of the roots here, even to these longer ones and just make sure that those still look pretty healthy, so this all looks like nice, white, healthy root tissue here, and I’m glad that we’re going over this too. Because since the plant did spend a few days drying out, you might think that that would have killed the roots, but it actually doesn’t. You can see they’re still alive. They’re still white and healthy, so letting them dry out for a few days will not hurt the roots. It may put the plant under stress, but if it was already having some health problems, then it was already under stress, so you’re actually doing a lot of good in helping it and just assisting it so now that I’m able to see the healthy root system and the stem, I can see more of that, and I can feel it better and see what’s going on. I feel pretty confident that this is a healthy plant and that it was just over watered and root rot did not set in with it. So we’re good to plant this up. I am going to let it dry out a little bit. Um, before we go ahead and pop that up, so I’m not going to wait a few days. Though this time, you know, there’s not much soil in there. It’s going to dry pretty quickly, so I’m just going to let it dry for maybe, like half a day and pot it up. You know, a little bit later today. So I’ll be back with you guys for that, and I just wanted to do that. As kind of an example of if you’re at a point where you’re not sure if your plant has just been over watered and just, you know, has some mushy yellowing leaves, or if it actually has root rot that has set in, so I want to just share that as an example of what to do when you’re not sure and it could go either way. Okay, since we have both of these plants here at the same time. I thought this would be a good time to share with you. Guys, what you’re looking for when you unpot your over watered succulent, so we’ve got two different directions that these have both taken. They were both over watered. One ended up with root rot one, didn’t we? We were able to save it in time. So when you unpot an over, watered succulent. What you want to see is on this side here, so you want to see nice, healthy white roots. Still, you want to see a firm stem no mushiness or discoloration at the stem? Normally, it’s hard to see, though, if the stem has the root rot because it will go through the core of the stem, or you know, right in the center of the stem and you won’t see the discoloration until it spreads to the outside or the outer tissues of the stem, so that’s a really hard one to see, but normally the roots are a good giveaway because it will start there and so these are all really nice, white, healthy roots. The stem is still very firm so that is still in good condition. Everything is still really healthy on this plant, so we were able to save this one in time and it does not have root rot now. This plant is another option of what you could see. When you unpot your over watered succulent, In fact, you know what what I’m going to do is actually dip this in water. I just want to show you what it would look like. If you pulled it out of wet soil, so let’s just go ahead and dip this into some water here. Yeah, see, those roots are just all all pretty much dead and desiccated. Yeah, there’s no life left in those now. I just want to show you up. Close what it looks like when your plant has gotten root rot, so you can see. The root system is pretty desiccated. There’s not much left to it. Um, these were the last surviving roots that were really trying to stay alive, but there’s just nothing left in them. There’s no life in them. Um, you give them a little squeeze and you just feel they’re kind of hollow and empty. They’re not white anymore. They’re brown so even. When I got them wet, they didn’t clean up and go white. How the other ones did you know? Sometimes the soil can make them look brown, but once you kind of rinse them away, you’re able to see if it still is white. And if there’s still any life left to them, you can see. This is just kind of all flattened out, and there’s just nothing Nothing left. No life coming through those roots anymore. And then at the base of the stem, you can see how that’s discolored. It’s brown, It’s it’s puckered, and also when you go to squeeze it, it’s kind of hard, but when you give it a good squeeze, you can feel it’s kind of foamy and soft in there, so the root rot is not always going to feel like super mushy, so you can see the discoloration goes right up to here, and we are going to attempt to save this. We’re going to do a little bit of surgery on it, but we’re going to do that in the next video. So I’ll do that video right after this one. Um, I’ll get it up as soon as possible, but I just wanted to show you kind of what was going on here and also right up here. You can see at the very top. This poor little plant tried to put out some new roots, right where it was still healthy and green, so it’s still fighting for its life. So it knew that those lower roots were no longer viable and that it was not going to get any more life through that lower part of the stem, so it started trying to save itself by producing roots higher up here, so we’ll talk more about root rot in the next video. I’ll have that video coming up right after this one. And so we’ll talk more about the root rod and how to save your succulent from root rot after it already has it and the different stages of root rot. Okay, I’m gonna let our Graftobera Opalina dry out for today and I’ll be back to pot it up with you guys later today. All right, we’re gonna mix up our soil, So I’ve got a pre-mix on this side. This is Evie stone organics. It’s a cactus and succulent! Mix, it’s really gritty. I like this one a lot, so I’m going to use this mix, but I’m also going to use a little of our cocoa chips. This is from eco grow its. One of their custom mixes is just cocoa chips, cocoa peat and pumice mixed together. So I’m just going to take a couple of handfuls and kind of throw that into my other mix on this side. Just add a little extra aeration in there. A little extra grittiness. So I used about two parts of the cactus soil to one part of the extra cocoa and cocopeat chips, so we’ve got a good, gritty cactus and succulent mix there for cactus and succulents. My favorite type of pot to use is terracotta, just natural unglazed, terracotta, it’s breathable, It allows aeration or air flow, and it helps the water to evaporate, so the water can actually evaporate from the soil All the way around the pot instead of just through the drainage hole. So I’ve got my piece of screen here, and I always like to use window screen. I just cut out a piece and I just place that window screen over the bottom of my pot over the drainage hole to keep soil from escaping through that drainage hole. So I’m just going to drop that in the bottom there. Okay, let’s add our soil. So if you’re ever mixing up custom soil, you want it to be gritty and breathable, but you don’t want it to be too Chunky to where the roots aren’t in contact with the soil. You don’t want air pockets that are too big, so I’m just going to hold the plant while I’m back filling, and sometimes I’ll just keep the plant tilted over to one side, and I’ll just push the soil around because I try not to get the soil caught in the rosette. Sometimes that happens and you can always use a little brush to brush it out of the rosette. And sometimes I’ll just turn it to where you can kind of cover it, especially these succulents that have the Farina. I try to avoid touching those leaves, and if I do touch them, It’s from the lower underside part, so I don’t want to disturb its sun protection. That’s going to need that, and I might lift that up. Just a little, just wiggle it. Lift it, lift it. I want it to be a little higher up as I press down that soil. Now this is going to be super fast draining soil and it’s going to get plenty of air. It’s going to be able to dry out really easily in between waterings. Now, if you want, you could add a top dressing just to cover the soil. It just gives it a nice finish complete. Look, or you could leave it open. In case you feel like you might need to pull the plant out again later and check it or something, but I’m going to add a top dressing and you can add any kind of pebbles or stones that you like. So this top dressing that I’m using right now. This is Turfi’s And it’s a calcium clay, So it’s just little. Uh, like fired Clay chips, basically, okay, I’m just gonna take the pot and stamp it down. That’ll also help the soil and the top dressing settle, so it kind of closes up any air pockets. Okay, so I’m going to leave it exactly as is. We’re not going to water it at least for another week or two ill. Just leave it dry, you know, in dry soil and just keep an eye on it and just make sure no other leaves, start changing yellow or going mushy or anything, but I think this one is going to recover Just fine, so since we have a succulent, that is a little bit fragile. You know, it’s just been freshly repotted and it might be under a little bit of stress right now or shock. I don’t want to add any extra stress to it, so I’m going to keep it out of direct sunlight for now while it’s recovering and getting re-established in its new pot. So I’m just going to give it bright indirect light or bright shade here on our patio. All right, guys! The next video coming up will be how to save your succulent from roof. Rot, it’ll be kind of a part two to this video, So I will let you go. Thank you guys so much for watching. I love you, and I wish you the best success in growing your succulents and have fun with it. All right, guys, see you in the next one bye.