Awhile back, I posted my Tin Can Succulents, and for awhile, I had a lot of fun with my “garden” at work. But two months later, my plants were getting soft, and some were even translucent. This, my friends, was my first experience with “root rot.” Turns out, while these plants don’t need a lot of water to survive, too much will kill them and my makeshift planters just didn’t have enough drainage.
Now, while the losses were great, I did manage to save three of them. The downside is that these guys had gotten really leggy growing in my office, but I wasn’t ready to give up on them just yet. Now that I had a deck, I decided to see if I could revive them by giving them some sun, and a month of heat and sunlight did them a lot of good.
After reading a post on Propagating Succulents 101 from The Dainty Squid, and realized that these guys could be re-planted and decided to try propagation. This time, however, I learned my lesson.
First, I had to improve drainage. The holes I had popped in the bottom of the cans in round one were far from adequate. I tripled the number of holes as my first step. Part of the issue was that these were not meant to facilitate drainage, and the soil held a lot of moisture.
To ensure water is draining and not getting trapped at the bottom, I first filled the bottom third of the can with aquarium gravel. I then filled them up with succulent soil and gave each a thorough soaking.
Next, I popped off the leaves that were far down on the stem. In one of the pots, I was super pleased to see there were a few pups already started! I did my best to scoop them out and transplant them without disturbing the roots that had started.
Finally, I was left with just the tops of each stem, which, according to Kaylah, can be replanted. I carefully broke these off as well and dug them into the new pots.
They look wonderful, and only time will tell if the propagation takes, but in the mean time, I’m pretty pleased with the result.
Hi! I'm Alyce. 
