3 All About Lithops Care

Hey guys, it's Erica and today we're going to be talking about one of my favorite succulents of all time, one of the cutest succulents of all time, Lithops. Also known as splitting rocks, living stones, they just have a bunch of crazy names but they are Lithops, they are the cutest succulent ever. They're just these little guys that live deep in the dirt and only their little heads pop out and they come in so many different beautiful colors. I'm trying to collect them all. So these guys are really well suited to people who tend to underwater like me because they literally need to be watered like less than once a month. So they're really good for people who kind of just want a little plant but aren't really into like the taking care of the plant part. You could just kind of leave them there, forget about them, but also kind of admire them during the time that you're forgetting about them and water them like three times a year and that's it. The reason why these plants need to be watered so infrequently is because of their funky little growth cycle. These guys are just, I cannot express my love for them. But they have just like this little growth cycle and we're going to start after with a fresh plant. Okay, there's a fresh plant, this is during summertime and he's just living his little life and you're watering him and he spouts a little flower and you're watering him and then the flower dies and you stop watering him once the flower dies because once the flower dies, a new little baby is growing inside the plant. You can't see it, but inside here there's going to be a little baby growing, it's going to start popping out during the springtime, it's going to come out from the little crevices of the split part in the split rocks and then you're going to have a new plant and the old one is going to shrivel away. That was just a really fast explanation of their growth cycle. Depending on where they are at in their growth cycle signifies when you need to water them. So the only time you need to water them is once their outer shells have completely deflated. So you can see here, these are like the little outer shells, this is the new plant, this is the old plant and these are still pretty plumped up and these outer shells are giving moisture to this guy and pretty soon they're just going to crumble away and just completely deflate and once that happens, then you can water your plant because it no longer is getting moisture from the old part of the plant so you can give it water and you only need to water it like once a month once that outer shell has completely depleted its water resources. Then it's going to start sprouting a flower kind of in late summer to fall. The flowers are so pretty by the way, they're white or yellow and they kind of look like daisies or dandelions and they're just one of the many reasons why this plant is like the best succulent ever. And once the flower dies, that is when it starts putting its energy into making a new baby plant and during this time you do not want to water it at all. So during the winter it's kind of putting its energy into building new plants and then in the spring the plant will start to pop out. And let me show you one that's kind of early in the cycle. This guy you can see little babies coming out, this one it's farther along and coming out and this one kind of has depleted all its outer resources. And then kind of getting more in depth into their watering schedule, you can see that the ones that I showed you, these Lithops are in the same pot but they're kind of in different stages of their growth cycle. So this is kind of a more difficult situation which is why it's a little bit easier to have less Lithops in one pot than having a whole bunch of them together. But when this happens you can pretty much water them with a little dropper just in that one section. For example, this little guy looks like he's ready to be watered but this one is in no way shape or form ready to be watered. So I could just get a little dropper and water that one little Lithops and kind of steer clear of the one that doesn't need water. A way to tell that your Lithops needs water is if it will start shriveling. But a shriveling plant also means that it could be depleting its water source to its new growth or it could just be your Lithops is thirsty. So you kind of want to make sure that you know what stage of the growth cycle your plant is in before you water it. So since now is springtime I know that this is when my little Lithops are kind of sprouting their little babies and if they're shriveling it's probably because they're just sprouting a new baby. And if this happens in like the summertime then I know that's because it's thirsty. And also a plus that is for lazy plant parents like me is that they do not really need to be fertilized. So you just got to not even think about that. They rarely need to be watered they don't even need fertilizer and they rarely need to be repotted which is all good. But for their soil requirements if you do want to repot them I would say to stick to something that is not not very organic. Like the mixes that Lithops usually come in are pretty like they kind of have a lot of organic material in it but if I were to repot these guys I would definitely go for more inorganic types of materials like perlite, pumice, sand and I would not recommend to use coco coir for these at all. And when I eventually repot these I'm just going to use 100% pumice and I'm just going to have them living in 100% pumice. When you repot them you also want them to be in kind of a taller pot because they do have really long roots and you can see here that they're already kind of gathering at the bottom. So I would definitely put it in a taller pot than the one that it's in and yeah they're so easy. You don't even need to make a soil mix for them you just give them 100% pumice and they'll be good. And these are kind of a plant that you can put in a bigger pot because as they grow they'll kind of like multiply and get bigger. And you don't need to repot them often so you can just have them in a container, like a bigger container, not huge but a bigger container than you would normally a plant and they can just kind of fill up that container as they grow and you don't need to worry about repotting or anything like that. It couldn't be any easier unless you're someone who really likes to tend to your plants because you're gonna have to really hold yourself back on this one. Alright for the sunlight requirements, they do need a lot of sun and I would say to give them direct morning light and then indirect afternoon light. So really good windows for these plants are south facing and east facing. If you have a south or east facing window those tend to get like direct early, direct morning sunlight but in the afternoon it's not as direct. But they're still getting a lot of sunlight and the reason you want them to have a lot of sun is because it keeps their beautiful colors. Imagine if, like if I put this guy in an area that's too dark he's gonna lose his beautiful colors and that would make me so sad. And also you can tell when they're not getting enough light if they're kind of really stretching out of the dirt. So like if they start looking like this and the reason this one looks like this is because I dropped him so he's missing a lot of soil. I dropped him when I bought him in a video but he's fine, he's fine. But that's why he's looking kind of stretched out like that but when they start looking like this that's kind of when you know they need more sun because usually they're kind of flatter against the ground instead of like poking up everywhere. But they do start poking up just not super exaggerated. If it gets really exaggerated and they start losing color then you know that baby might need a little bit more sunlight. And grow lights are also good for these plants. I keep this one in grow lights. So they still do well in grow lights as well. The rest of these plants I keep in a south facing window. They sit directly on the window ledge and they really love it there. They just look so good. For propagating this plant there's not really like a way to prop- to like truly propagate them. Like if I were to take a cutting from a plant like you can't do that for Lithops unfortunately. The only way to propagate them would be to split them. These are commonly kind of grown from seed and that's how people get more of them. There's a way to harvest the seeds from the flowers and when mine flower I'm 100% going to try that out. But so far I haven't tried it so I don't really have advice on that. But I'm really looking forward to trying it out and growing baby Lithops from seed. That would be just amazing. I've also been asked how I choose out my Lithops at the store. And honestly I kind of go for the ones that look very healthy. They don't have any scarring on them. Like this one I have here. You can see this guy has a little bit of scarring right there. And normally I wouldn't buy one that looks like this but I really love the color. I've never seen this color before and it was the only one like that so I went ahead and bought it anyways. And it's just going to split and those leaves are going to go away eventually so it's fine. And another thing is that I avoid any Lithops that have wet soil. Because garden centers or like some place that's not a specialty cactus seller. Like I bought these three specifically from like a cactus shop at the Rose Bowl. And I love buying Lithops from them. But they'll kind of water their plants whenever and since Lithops need such little water it worries me to start off with them already being over watered. They might be over watered. So I tend to go for the ones that have really dry soil. These ones I bought from Armstrong Garden Center and they kind of met the criteria of looking healthy and having dry soil. So I went ahead and bought two of them. But yeah they're such cute plants. They're so colorful and they're so like I kind of just I'm trying to collect all the different colors. They're just the most adorable plants ever. I've only seen two people say that they don't get the hype about Lithops and I don't understand because they're the cutest plants ever and everyone should love them. But that is it for today's video. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope if you are not in love with Lithops you have fallen in love with them during this video and I just want to thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you in the next one. Bye!