How to Speed Up Succulent Propagation

Okay guys, so I love these Lily Sina babies. They are absolutely gorgeous. They've been in my propagation tray for probably a couple months now. I have three of them here. So one thing that I've noticed that especially this type of succulent does, and a couple of my other ones have done it too, is that they'll grow a perfectly healthy baby and they'll grow perfect roots, but then their leaf won't do anything. So especially like this one, you can see it really well. The leaf started to shrivel up here, but then it just turned this weird black dusty color and it's not doing anything. And then these guys have not been growing at the same rate that I'm, I guess, used to. And so this is just a picky step. This is me just being kind of picky on this, but I'm going to show you what I do to kind of accelerate the growth of these, because this is my favorite succulent right now and I really want to use these in my wedding bouquet, but that means I need them to be bigger. And so since I'm getting married in July, they will have a couple months to grow, but I need them to facilitate that growing on their own. So I'll show you my other Lily Sinas here in a second. Okay, so this is my other group of Lily Sinas that I've propagated. They're getting fairly big. This one here is probably like an inch and a half wide. So as you can see, they're getting there. These I spaced far apart and I watered them once and they're already overlapping leaves, which is ridiculous. So I'm going to have to figure that out. They are fast growing, but these ones are kind of just stuck being stationary. So I'm going to show you my method. So a couple of tools that you might want that I have are just some tweezers. I have my little sewing scissors and I have an exacto knife. So those might help you. Be really careful. These are sharp tools and I don't want any of you guys to be getting hurt. So the main goal here is to keep everything intact with removing the leaf. And so you want to make sure that the roots won't be falling off when you do this. And then with this one, I might try to split it down the middle so that I can separate the two rosettes. So I'll put these two off to the side for a second. We'll start with this guy. Oh, there's a baby here. Okay, so I'm going to start by just kind of rubbing the roots in between my fingers so I can kind of see a little bit better what's going on. I want to get rid of that dirt. That's a little bit neater. Just dump that. Now, let's see here. I think I'm going to start by just cutting off this leaf here. Okay, freaking painless. And then I'm going to be trying to remove it. Now, I hope this focuses on it. I want to grab this part and I'm going to start pulling it. And then with this thumb, I'm going to hold on to these roots here. So hopefully everything will stay there. Perfect. Okay, so as you can see, that was a nice clean break. All of the roots are still intact perfectly. So there's one guy. And then here's the remainder of the leaf that looked like mealybugs here. This is almost what mealybugs look like. This isn't a mealybug. But if you guys do see white stuff like that on your succulent, that might be an indication of a mealybug. So thankfully that is not. Another thing with your propagated succulents, if your succulents do stall in their growth, another thing you can do is check for mealybugs and then spray with rubbing alcohol. And hopefully those will go away. They do stunt the growth of succulents. So okay, so I will plant him up later. But yay. This is the one where it blacked a little bit on the leaf. So same thing here. I just want to start by removing the dirt. If you missed our propagation video, go check that out. I'll post the link below on how we treated our succulents for this to get ready. Okay, so that is off. And then same thing, I'm just going to kind of come close to... Sorry, you're just getting a big full snapshot of my fingers, my hangnails. But I'm just going to try to come as close to the base as I can. Cut that off. And then those leaves are done. You're not going to be able to propagate from them anymore. So just throw them away. And I'll turn this upside down. So same thing, I'm going to hold these roots down with my thumb here. And you want to be really careful to be gentle with this because the leaves are very fragile and they will break. And same thing, kind of just coming from an angle. And this one, you can see that the roots sort of detached. However, they're still connected. So I'm just going to be pushing that back together. And he should do just fine like that. Okay, so now for the trickier one with the two babies. So start off with the same thing. Now, don't water these succulents for a couple of days. They are going to be susceptible to root rot, or just rot in general if you do. So be really careful not to do that. So this one, you might try just the whole thing. I kind of dig my nail into this a little bit on the other side of the roots for just a little bit more leverage. There we go. Perfect. Okay, so as you can see, that was a nice clean break as well. So you can just do it with the whole leaf. I just chose not to on the other ones. I thought it would be a little easier. Okay, so here are some dead leaves. Totally fine. Just checking for mealy bugs. And I don't see any, so that's a good sign. Now, with this double head, they tend to push together and it makes it harder for them to grow. So I'm going to take my X-Acto knife, and I'm going to be trying to split the root ball evenly between the two so they each get a portion of roots. Ideally, that's what will happen. If it doesn't, then it's not the end of the world. This cutting will push out new roots on its own. It just might be slower to growing. So I think right here is where the plant separates. So find that separation. And then I think if I cut right here, each one should get a couple of roots. Oh, can't get it to stay down. So I think I'm going to hold the roots here while I cut down the center. All righty, so put my cap back on that before I cut myself. Just gently pull the roots apart and there you have it. Two perfect little nubbin babies. Please ignore my hangnail here. There's one, there's two, and then I'll show you them replanted up. Okay, so here's just a close-up of those lily senas planted up. It's actually been a couple days. I forgot to shoot this, so I've watered them now and they've been doing just fine. So I hope this video was helpful in speeding up your propagation. Please like this video and subscribe below so you don't miss anything. Okay, bye!