the times Saturday June 11 202218 Outside
VISIONS/GAP PHOTOSHow to repot
your succulents
Stephen Anderton gives his top tips
O
ne of the joys of this time
of year is getting some
of those tougher house-
plants outside again after
keeping them indoors
for protection through-
out winter. And the last to
go alfresco are the succulents, which this
winter (one that was for me mild
but miserable) never needed to come
any further indoors than a frost-free
open-fronted garage. Green and black-
leaved aeoniums, Kalanchoe beharensis,
orgyalis and thyrsiflora, aloe vera and
arborescens, they have now all headed
out in front of the house for their season in
the sun.
So, how do you repot mature succu-
lents? And how big a pot do they need?
Maybe the answer is shown by how
many can be propagated simply by poking
a bit of stumpy, leafy stem or even just a
leaf into a pot of gritty compost — they can
come through rootlessness and thrive withgreat ease. And so my policy when it
comes to repotting is not to go on putting
them each year into ever bigger pots but to
take them out of the pot, prune the roots
back, and repot them in a container no
larger than looks suitable and gives
adequate stability.
That said, sometimes getting a succu-
lent out of its pot can be tricky because if
you’ve put them in clay pots (where they
drain best by wicking away moisture) then
the roots often cling to the inside of the pot.
I find aeoniums such as ‘Zwartkop’, with its
shiny black rosettes, produce a mesh of
fine white root that clings to the pot like a
spider’s web and to separate the two I have
to slide a knife between the rootball and
the pot.
Of course, you damage the web in the
process, but it doesn’t matter if it comes out
a bit chopped. Tall-growing aeoniums
such as A. arborescens and its variety
‘Zwartkop’ can have their roots snipped
back by a third anyway, and then be repot-ted either in the old pot or one slightly
larger. Low-growing, mounding succu-
lents such as Kalanchoe thyrsiflora and
Aeonium sedifolium can simply be set into
a wider shallow pot. After a few years when
they start to become woody and ugly,
it’ll be time to take cuttings and start
again anyway.
Handling succulents is tricky. They
are such rubbery, sometimes snappable
things. To get one out of its pot it’s best, if
you can, to slide one open-fingered hand
under the branches to grip the trunk, then
lift it away gently, or if necessary drag it
away with the pot on its side; then, as soon
as possible, you can get your other hand
under the roots to take their weight.What you don’t want to do is have to
make sudden grabs at rubbery, breakable
foliage and soft stems because for all their
willingness to root and grow, succulents
tend to have a formal symmetry that is
slow to repair itself. Your care is well worth
the effort.
Easiest to repot of course are old succu-
lents that have grown a bare trunk, like
those aeoniums again with a mushroom-
shaped head. My advice? Don’t bother
repotting, just start again. As soon as they
have extended a few centimetres of soft,
rootable new growth, chop the top off the
mushroom-like head (7cm?) and take one
of those so-easy cuttings to grow from.
Much nicer.Aloe veraWeeder’s
digest
Cut out at the base
the stems of bearded
irises after they flower
to let light and air get
to the rhizomes. If they
are modern remontant
varieties, which flower a
second time later in the
summer, now is the
moment to feed and
water them.
When osteospermum
flowers are spent, their
heads will droop and
twist low. Snip off the
entire stalk back into
the clump.
The best thing about
lambs’ lugs is its carpet
of velvety grey leaves
that spread across
the soil. The tall furry
flower stems have
charm, but the moment
they flop cut them out,
right at the base, to
ensure the plant puts
its energies into that
wonderful basal foliage.
SA