Succulents, let's talk about
them for a second here. Definitely something that I don't
grow as much as other things, either indoors or outdoors, but
I'm certainly interested in them. And I'm particularly interested in, what are some misconceptions
we have about succulents? And then also just
where do they come from? We have millions of them being sold all
over the country, all over the world. Who's actually producing all these? And so what I thought I
would do is snap my fingers, head up to San Jose
later on in this video, and talk to someone who is in charge of
a succulent program that is developing hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
or even tens of millions of succulents. And how he does that at scale, misconceptions that people have about
succulents and just some really fun, under the curtain things about succulent
creation, propagation, and care. So let's go ahead and go up to San
Jose and I'll see ya in a second. We're here. With Dylan, the succulent
God of this nursery, and he's about to drop some
serious Epic knowledge on us. So what are we looking at right here? So what we're looking at right here is a
selection of cuttings that we both have sourced from different growers
across the globe, basically. And also from a large selection of
plants that we have here in the nursery. Yeah. And so what my workers were
just, that you just saw here, were doing is she's putting together
these schedules for upcoming planting forecasts that we've
got, that are coming through. So she's coming through, quantifying each
plant that we have, how many we have, and also trying to pull material
that's of a like size. Right. So that when we're planting
into certain sizes, like I think these are for
probably going to be for a 2.5, which is a little two-inch pot
by pot. Yeah. Pot by pot sizing. So most of these will be one plant per. Some of this stuff that we get sometimes
can be a little undersized and can make things difficult. Sure, sure.
Plants are a diverse thing. You can't always be perfect, but we
have been doing really well here. I'm pulling a lot of really nice,
consistent material out of here. This is our kalanchoe tomentosa. It's kind of a short little shrubby kalanchoe
that's native to Madagascar and South Africa. Really popular.
Fuzzy too. Yeah, very fuzzy. They call it panda plant,
which is kind of a silly name, but it's got the black and white on it.
Plant names can be a little funny. Yeah, exactly. But, so you can see
a lot of different cuttings. Basically what we do is that she
goes out, she takes the cuttings, or we get them in from our suppliers. They then sit as a stage here for about
a week or two until we're then ready to plant. They've got to kind of scab over
a little bit. That week of drying time, yeah. And we've been finding, let me
just show you these guys right here. These ones I've been finding that
over time. These are crazy. Yeah. So this is a really cool one
called Senecio stapeliiformis. Yep. It's a kind of a small little
rhizomatous grower from South Africa. It's actually, you can tell
from the flowers, for those
that know their flowers, these are in the daisy family. So
it's an Asteraceae family plant, which is pretty bizarre because it looks
nothing a herbacious perennial. Yeah. It doesn't have your same leafy colors
and also the flowers are highly reduced so that they don't have those auxiliary
puddles around the outside of that. Just pop it right out of the top. Just, just the parts that are totally
necessary. Yeah. Interesting. And when a red flower like this
pops up in the South African Saraha, bugs are going to come to it. Yeah, yeah. What I've been finding with plants
like this is that these actually need a significant amount of time to callous
over this wound. That's a big cutting too. There's a real fine line between a plant becoming so desiccated that it
is throwing out its last bit of energy to set roots into the soil. Yeah. And then that perfect amount of time
that a plant needs in order to transfer. Right. Cutting too soon and you
have a rotting scenario. Too soon. And so like with things like this, so this is a perfect example of
a cutting that was just taken. And you can see that the wound there
is still completely and totally fresh, totally open. So we would want
to let this sit here and dry. And that callousing is for a
couple of different reasons. It basically stimulates the root growth
but it also closes off that wound, which is a vector for viruses
and diseases that get in there. And so it'll dry out. And then
actually once that callous is hardened, there's a hormonal response that happens
within the plant that then stimulates it to grow roots. And while
succulents can be very difficult, a lot of other herbaceous plants that are, that cuttings are taken of - you need
hormones and you actually need moisture in order to induce those rooting
sites. With succulents, like I said, it's a very fine line. And so when we're rooting large
swaths of plants like this, if you look out over here, this was actually just one large
project that we had done. It's I think. Wow! 24,000 individual plants
or something like that. And so to get consistent rooting
times throughout all of those, you need to be totally aware
of what plants you're planting. Every single variable. What its requirements are and what it's
actually really going to need and take. So with a plant like this, we've
been making some adjustments. Most of the time we'll give
these things a one week dry time, but for these guys we're going
to try out two weeks. Right. We've had some unfortunate
rotting, but nothing is perfect. And you're just watching everything,
right? Cause you do a one week dry time, it doesn't work as well. You switch it
to two, you change one variable. Yeah, exactly. And so you know,
it really with succulents, a lot of things can be very
generalized. Full sun, no water, let it dry before you plant
it. A lot of these things are said because it gives us the best
chance of general success for most of these plants. I think also from
like the home gardener perspective, you don't have to be right on this scale.
Right. You know what I mean? Right. You can have some losses,
but if you have a 5% loss, that's devastating for you guys. When your Sinesio at home starts to die
and you want to save it and you take your three little cuttings that are left
and you're going to bring it back from the brink of death, it's not as dire
as say these larger projects like this. But it is still good to know what you're
working with. Here's another Sinesio. Sinesios typically are pretty
voracious growers. And in fact, I could probably dig up a cutting here
that's actually got some adventitious root growth. Starting to
pop out already? Yeah. They'll start from the
undersides of the stems. So there's a couple sites right
there and it's really small. But you can see just those little nubs
there, those are actually rooting sites. And so the plants will actually start
to throw roots out well before you even cut them. And so plants like that can. It's like similar to the bottom of a
tomato where you see the nodules start to form. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. And it's
those, yeah. You can see. There you go. See a little nub right there. Right there.
That's the beginning of a root. Yep. And so with these, you really, the cutting and the callousing
is almost a purposeless act. You could really truly
with plants like this, I've called them the
garden worthy succulents, where you could take a cutting and throw
it over your shoulder and it'll root where it lands. You know what I
mean? So those are, those are fairly, fairly easy. Yeah. So we move down
to see a bunch of different types. We've got plants from all over the
world in here. Oh, these are awesome. We've got Scilla. This is a little bulbous type plant
that comes from South Africa. Wow. That's really neat. That's
a really cool one. Unique, we've got some blooms right there. Yeah.
Super highly reduced, but beautiful. Silver squill is another name
for those ones. Pretty cool. So plants like this are actually pretty
easy because the division is the ideal form. You can see there's even another
little baby right in there. And so now you've got five. And
pull those apart and there you go. That's your starting. With
a lot of this stuff too, what we do is probably just
take the roots away and just be, we just do it that way. Yeah.
And so then we've got sedums, we've got some more Senecio.
Here's some Graptopetalums. These are from Central America. Just
kind of a really cool little plant here. Wow. I really like
these guys. The flowers, let's see if I can get a live flower
on these guys. I'm not seeing one. Don't see any, but
these are a really neat, super diminutive little plant in the
Crassulaceae family. There you go. Yup. They're just a really neat. Right
there. Yeah. That's really cool. Yeah, they're beautiful. Wow. Love these
ones. Super small, tiny little plants. A lot of big ones. You've got more
kalanchoes here. Here's some burro's tail. It's a real classic one. A super popular
one. Yeah. And then we get down here, we're getting into the.
So if we get into here, we're going to get into what we've already
started already. Yeah. You can see, this is kind of a prime example of plants
that are in this intermittent stage. You can visually see the ones that have
not totally thrown roots yet. Yep. Yep. And then you can see the
ones starting to dry out. They're using up their resources.
A lot of the times for me, visual cues are what I'm
using on a daily basis. Before I'm even touching the plants, I've surmised at least three or four
different things about how the plant is doing, what it's doing, where it is in its rooting stage and how
much water it's actually going to need. And so you can see ones
that are kind of in between. This guy right here is a little
on the sketchy side. Yeah, it's still got a little play to it. These
guys are pretty much fully rooted in. This guy looks nice. Yeah, exactly. And so do you come through then and
quality control and pull if it's like too far gone? That's, I mean any, yeah. Any good grower is constantly
observing and it's basically, it's a huge portion of the job is to
basically just observe these plants on a day-to-day basis. And that
is both from picking them up. Larger pots you do this a lot where you
pick it up and you actually feel the weight of it. The top visual representation of the color
of the soil isn't always an indicator of whether or not the entire profile
is totally saturated with water. So picking up larger pots and just kind
of giving them a heft is a good way of recognizing whether or not there's
enough soil. Coloration on the plants. And then also, yeah, pulling on
them. They're coming out right there. Exactly. And so you can see
some new growth on there. This is a Haworthia pentagona. I'd imagine at your sort
of level you see so much, you can look at a plant and be like,
this is this, this, this, this. What's going on with it. Right.
So like with a group like that, there's some pretty intermittent
success happening over there right now. You can see the ones that are
actually doing well with that nice, lighter green color that's popping out. And then ones that really
are not coming through. And so you've got a lot of
intermittent, but some plants are, some plants are, you know,
more 60/40 than others. Plants like this. This is almost at
a hundred, a hundred percent here. And so it's pretty easy
to see. There we go. Here's the one. Can't be totally
perfect. Semi-fail. So one, one pot that basically the cutting
just didn't get totally stuck in. And he's still throwing a
root out. He'll be fine. So we'll just kind of stick him like
that and we'll catch up with him a little bit later. Awesome. Yeah, so a
lot of different stuff in here. Here's another group of plants
that obviously has some difficulty. Not all plants are perfect.
This one specifically, we've had some pest issues with
it in the past. And so again, observational cues are really
key to maintaining healthy crops, you know, so. Cool. I mean
you grow thousands upon
thousands, tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands of succulents. You've seen probably every mistake
that could be made. And made myself. And you've made. So what would you say are like
five perhaps misconceptions or mistakes that people will make when it
comes to succulent care? So starting is placement of the plant. Ill placement of these plants can be
pretty detrimental right off the bat. You know, indoor situations can be very challenging
and so finding that right light level for these plants is very important. Yep. And I think that more
light is always better, but total and complete unrelenting sun
is not always the best either. Right. Which people will think is, cause they say throw it in the dirt
and forget about it. Yeah, exactly. Brings us to the second part is never
watering these plants. Full sun, no water gets you a lot of color but it
also gets you a very short-lived plant. Okay. In the end, watering these plants pretty generally
and pretty consistently gives you a lot more color out of these plants.
And lot more even growth. These ones are just starting out, but it can actually encourage a lot of
root growth to come out of the plants. So while a lot of people feel like they
need to throw a cutting onto dry soil and never water it until
it shows signs of growth, that's not always the
best way to go about it. And so watering these plants in after
they've shown a little bit of root growth is very important. Fertilizer can be super
helpful in bringing these
plants up to a really healthy growing status. You don't want
to overfertilize these plants, but they do appreciate a
general fertilizer really
at any point in time during the growing season. Okay. Let's see. As far as soil mixes goes, a lot of people choose to put these things
in basically like sand and lava rock. Yeah, perlite or something
like that. And honestly, while that is good for
a lot of these plants, succulents really do appreciate what we
would call in the horticulture industry, immaculate drainage. But
that doesn't mean that these, that the soil that you're using has
to be devoid of all compost or organic materials. A good general soil mix is
what I like to recommend to people. And even still maybe taking a general
potting mix and a cactus mix and just 50/50 mixing. Because I was going to say.
I've found it to be my best mix. Yeah. And when you're going back to the
horticulture sort of immaculate drainage, what does that mean to
the layman? Basically, a soil that will let water
come in and then leave. And it's not holding too much. It's
not holding too much water. Yeah. Basically you don't want,
immaculate drainage, it pertains both to the soil and
to the pot that the plant is in. A pot with no drainage, you need to be very careful about how
much water you're actually putting in there because the water then
is not going to leave. Okay. Succulents appreciate a
certain amount of water. And this goes along with one of
the misconceptions about them being totally and utterly
drought tolerant plants. It's not that they are
never in contact with water. It's that the water that
they do come in contact with, they then are able to store through all
of these super-modified systems to then keep from when they don't have the water. They don't need to be pulling in
a constant way. Yeah, exactly. So, and then one of my favorite things that
I hear all the time about succulent plants that always makes me kind
of laugh, is that people proclaim, I didn't know they flowered. Yeah. And so I always have to kind of keep
myself from sounding like the snarky botanist type person that says
they're a flowering plant. They're not an angiosperm,
they're a gymnosperm. So all of these plants are gonna flower.
Unlike pine trees which, you know, let their pollen loose into the wind. All of these plants are all flowering
plants and all have a very beautiful flower that comes. A lot of
people can be, I don't know, kind of skeptical about whether or
not the flowers are worth looking at. And I always find them to be super
beautiful and really, really nice. And a nice surprise, I think.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. You'd be surprised how many people have
no idea that these plants would ever flower and it's always kind
of a shock to me. Cool. And just how versatile that they are.
I mean, a lot of these plants yeah, are from so many different
regions of the world. They can tolerate a lot of different
climactic conditions and, you know, explore and move some of them around
to the side of the house where maybe there's not as much sunlight and you'll
see a lot more full lush growth out of them. Colors may change a little bit, but for the most part these plants can
be fairly successful just about anywhere that you put them. Cool. Yeah. Awesome!
That's it guys, from the master himself, some succulent tips. Until next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
