All-Round Succulent Care Guide
How to grow quality succulents at home
Succulents are loved for their unusual shapes and colours, and for how tough they are. They will brighten up a windowsill, patio or garden with very little effort. This guide covers the basics of growing succulents in the UK: what they need, and how to keep them healthy all year round.
Pot choice
Choose a pot with a drainage hole if you can’t limit the watering (outdoors). A pot with no drainage hole can be used as long as you water moderately, but a pot with a hole tends to be more forgiving.
Terracotta is slightly breathable, so it is usually preferred over plastic, but the succulents don’t seem to mind too much.
Outdoor planting
If planting outside in the ground, prepare the area first: clear any weeds and make sure the soil is suitable for succulents. Raising them higher off the ground, in a raised bed or a rockery for example, will give you better growth. Most succulents love bright, airy conditions, though some prefer shade, so find out what each of your succulents needs before deciding where to plant it and what to plant it with.
Thanks to their waxy, leathery leaves, succulents cope with very windy conditions better than most plants and stay perfectly happy.
Many succulents can even survive temperatures below freezing if the drainage is good, which you will usually find on free-draining vertical walls, in rockery beds, or in a dry, windy part of the garden.
Soil mix
We recommend a standard multipurpose compost or John Innes No. 2 (a sandy soil mix), with 30% to 40% by volume of drainage material added: sand, grit or our personal favourite, perlite. This gives you a free-draining mix, which succulents need to stay healthy. Our General Succulent Compost Mix is designed specifically for succulents.
Watering
We often tell our customers to follow the 3 D’s to keep their succulents alive and happy:
- Drench. Completely drench the soil (for fully rooted plants only).
- Drain. Make sure the soil is free-draining.
- Dry. Leave the soil to dry out between waterings.
Over-watering is one of the most common causes of succulent problems. How much water a succulent needs depends largely on where you keep it, so bear that in mind when you water.
To tell whether a plant needs water, the best way is to pick up the pot and judge it by its weight.
Without proper drainage, succulents may suffer from root rot, especially in the winter months, so always make sure the drainage holes don’t become blocked. Good drainage gives them the desert-like conditions they need.
Outdoors
If your succulents live outside, you can probably get away with never watering them here in the UK, as the rain every few weeks in summer should give them enough. Succulents store a high percentage of their water in their leaves and stems, so unlike most plants they don’t need to sit in constantly wet soil to draw up moisture. Letting the soil dry out between waterings will also give you stronger colours and a tougher plant overall.
Indoors
Indoors, let the soil dry out between waterings. When you do water, soak the plant thoroughly to mimic a torrential downpour. Little and often is not a good idea. You want the succulent to send its roots out in search of moisture and nutrients, which builds a strong root system and a much hardier plant.
Depending on how warm your home is, you might water once a month or once a week. With the central heating on, you may find your pots dry out faster.
Low maintenance
This might sound very different from looking after most other plants, but we think it is what makes succulents a joy to keep: they need very little maintenance. The more you leave them alone, the more they reward you with faster growth, stronger colours and a more compact shape. Customers often ask how our succulents get such good colours, and this is how we keep them.
If your plants’ colours look washed out, try cutting back on watering, or simply don’t pot them on. Once succulents start competing for water and nutrients, their colours often deepen naturally, because you are recreating the dry conditions they come from. People often assume that more water and feed will improve the colours, but it is usually the opposite.
Flowering
Aeonium nobile can be a lush green, but kept in dry conditions it can turn a deep red. It also changes colour before it flowers, and its flower is one of the most spectacular in the Aeonium world.
You can extend the growing season by moving Aeoniums to a cooler, shadier spot, which reduces dormancy.
In winter, Aeoniums still grow, but more slowly. The ideal temperatures for them are 12-16°C at night and 18-22°C during the day.
Light levels
Choose plants that suit the conditions you have at home. You might notice odd growth, known as reaching or, to give it its correct name, etiolation. This can simply be because the plant you have chosen isn’t getting enough natural light. Haworthias make great indoor plants because they suit lower light, but they can also tolerate high light.
Aeonium tabuliforme (dinner plate) is a good choice for shady conditions, but it will often fade or yellow and can even suffer leaf burn if the light is too strong. Some Aeoniums turn green when they don’t get enough light to produce their dark leaf pigments, which often happens in winter when light levels are lower. Keep an eye on your succulents to check they are growing in the right shape and with the colours they are known for.
Growth rates
For good growth, we normally recommend refreshing the soil every year, which is easy with plants in pots. For succulents planted permanently in the ground, we recommend feeding with a general all-purpose plant food. If you want to slow growth down, simply let the soil run out of nutrients. It can take several months before the plant runs out to the point where its health suffers, and it will happily survive, because these plants come from low-nutrient, desert-like conditions with little rainfall and are well adapted to going without.
Thank you for reading!
If you have any other care questions, email us at info@surrealsucculents.co.uk and we will be happy to help.
You can find more of our care guides in the Plant Care & Advice section.
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