I bought a
Crassula Ovata a year or two ago and grow it in my
unheated garden room during the warmer months. Over winter, I bring it inside my home. It's a lovely plant, however, over winter it became rather 'leggy'; there were long shoots which were very healthy and green but the plant became top heavy. It wasn't what I wanted and I needed more growth lower down. So I pruned it. It's not hard to do; it's the same principle as pruning anything really, just cutting off above a leaf joint. Within a month it was sprouting new shoots from the main stem and also from where stems had been pruned.
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| Pruned Crassula ovata |
I do want it to grow into a good-sized plant (they can get seriously big, you know) but a manageable size. I also don't want it to look like a bonsai but I do want it to be a good shape. In the image below, you can see new shoots appearing from the main stem.
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| Pruned Crassula ovata with new shoots appearing from stems |
Crassula ovata, like many succulents, is easy to propagate too and I have used two methods: I stuck a couple of the cuttings into a separate pot, and I also did a couple of leaf propagations - the leaf propagations are really easy because all I did was to leave a leaf or two lying on the surface of the gritty soil, with the base in close contact with the soil, and nature does all the rest.
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| Crassula ovata leaf with new plant sprouting from the base of it |
You know, I used to have one of these a decade or so ago and it grew to a good size, a very small shrub, and it would produce lovely little white flowers all over it on a regular basis. Sadly, I had to leave it behind when I emigrated abroad for a decade. So, I have wanted to replace it ever since.
RHS information on Crassulas (external link)
You can kill succulents easily with kindness, ie overwatering. I think they are a bit like cacti and should be watered with caution and quite sparingly. Don't let them sit in water and they must be grown in freely draining soil. Mine is in a John Innes compost with a lot of gritty gravel chucked in for good measure!
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Dish of succulents grown in gravelly soil in a shallow dish, in bright sunlight near
a conservatory window. Crassula ovata is shown right at the back. It soon outgrew that dish,
and became a small 'tree' often covered with little white flowers. |
