Don't get water on your succulent leaf babies!.mp4

One of the common questions I get asked about propagating succulents from leaves is if it's okay to get water on the mother leaf and on that new baby rosette. Is it okay if water stays on top of them or do you have to like be really careful and avoid water getting on top of all of them? Well, if you're spraying them with a spray bottle, which is the only time I recommend using a spray bottle, don't use a spray bottle for your full-grown succulents. It's so inefficient. It doesn't promote healthy roots. That's a story for a different day. It is okay for leaf propagation because you don't have to soak the soil quite as much, but you'll obviously find that you get water on top of the leaves. This is not super problematic, but it's also not ideal. Having water that stands on top of the succulent leaves can cause the mother leaf or that little baby rosette to be a little more likely to rot. It's not guaranteed because a lot of times that water will dry up pretty quickly, but if you can avoid it, that is ideal. So how do you avoid getting water on the leaves? I have two tools that I highly recommend to help with this. A little blower and a squeeze bottle. Let me show you how I use them. So here I have a tray of succulents that I am propagating from leaves. You can see I have them all just laid out flat on the soil and they're at various stages of growth. One thing that I love about using the squeeze bottle is you can easily get the water right below the rosette. You can get just the roots and just the soil of the succulents wet. However, if you have very many succulents or leaves out here, it's still annoying to have to go right under where those little rosettes are growing or go right at the end of the leaf. So I still find myself spraying the entire tray of succulents with the squeeze bottle. Now I still like the squeeze bottle over a spray bottle just because it gets more water out there and it saturates the soil a little bit more than just the spray bottle would. So with a spray bottle you're just going to get like a light coating of water over the top. I prefer to have the water get a little bit damp, a little bit deeper down. So I like the squeeze bottle for that reason. However, as you can see, I do still end up with water on top of these succulent leaves. It's not a ton of water. It's probably not going to be overly problematic. However, if I can avoid it, I try to avoid it. So that is where the blower comes in. So I can easily blow the water off of all of these succulents and it's really quick to do. Now as you can see, when I was blowing here, I did get a lot of soil on the table and that's because I didn't get it totally wet when I was watering. I also didn't get every single last drop of water off. I mostly want to get the big droplets off because they're going to take the longest to dry. But you can see there's still some wetness here. So I'll go ahead and spray that off. And then there's one right in the middle of the rosette here. So I'm going to spray that one off as well. And a tiny bit there. You don't have to go crazy with this. Ultimately, as long as the succulents are drying out within a couple days, they should be just fine and it won't cause problems for the mother leaf. Now there's a lot of people who don't recommend watering your succulent leaves until a baby has grown and until it has roots or even until that mother leaf has dried up completely. I have had better success if I do lay them on top of damp soil. I find that they tend to grow a lot faster. And using this method that I just showed you, using that squeeze bottle to wet the coconut coir that they're laid on top of, I find that the succulents tend to grow pretty quickly and I don't usually have problems with rot. Normally, if your succulent leaves are rotting before a new baby grows, it probably wasn't a healthy leaf to begin with. So making sure that that initial leaf that you remove is healthy is really important. And then the other thing is just avoiding having it be soaking wet or drenching it in water and having it be on top of super wet soil all the time. So with these, they are on top of damp soil. I usually will water it like you saw there, except a little bit more thoroughly, but I'll water it like that about every two to three days. I find that when I'm growing them inside, it takes about that long for the coconut coir to dry out. And as you can see, these little succulent babies are super happy. So if you have not propagated from leaves before, I highly, highly recommend it. It is so much fun. It's really addicting, but one of the things that I love most about growing succulents. Thank you so much for watching. If you liked this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up, hit subscribe, share it with all of your succulent loving friends, and I will see you next time.