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5 Reasons Why Your Succulents Are Dying

What You Need to Know Before It's Too Late

By Ceilana SecondPublished 5 years ago 4 min read
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A large Perle Von Nurnberg

Succulents are everywhere. They’re pretty. They come in a range of colours. They’re easy to look after. They come in unusual shapes. So you give in and get one, but as soon as you do, you discover your plant isn’t as easy to look after as you’ve been told. It’s best you find out how to take care of your succulent before it’s too late.

1. Over Watering

The most common way to kill your succulent is by over watering. There are small differences between species of succulents, for most watering once a week is fine. During hot seasons you can water every four days. If you are not sure the weathers warm enough, check and see if the soil is damp first. If it is don’t water.

During the cold season, it’s best not to water more than once a week. After having difficulty with my plants previously, I now don’t water my succulents for 2-4 weeks, sometimes even six weeks (it’s cold, and there isn’t much sunlight where I keep them.) It’s best to be on the side of caution. When your succulents are too dry, they will tell you. The problem is when you overwater. Theres no saving a succulent thats been damp for too long.

Signs are:

  • Browning stems
  • Black stems
  • Browning leaves
  • Black leaves
  • Unusually soggy leaves
  • Wrinkled leaves (warning: identical to underwatered succulents.)

If you’ve flood your plant, the best thing to do is to take the leaves off, and cut any stems that haven’t yet rotted off. If your lucky, you’ll be able to re-root these, but you’ll have to act fast. Once your plant starts rotting it can die, in just a week.

2. Under Watering

Luckily with under-watering, you can fix this problem, by giving your plant a little drink. Do be careful though, you can’t water them every day until they perk up, as they can still die from overwatering. It can take a few careful weeks to fix, but they should always perk up, unless you’ve left the poor plant so long that the stems have dried up.

Signs of under watering are:

  • Browning stems
  • Browning leaves
  • Soggy leaves
  • Wrinkled leaves

As you can see the signs for under-watering, and overwatering are very similar, if you know you’re not very good at keeping plants, and you have a history of flooding them, leave them a little on the hungry side from time to time, especially during the winter (it took me a few dead plants to work out the weather changing meant I shouldn’t water my plants every two weeks! The windows in my house are too cold for it. If you can’t tell tell if your soil is wet, either dig up the mud, or see if you can tell by looking at the bottom of the pot.

3. Too Little Sunlight

Freshly planted Aloe Arista

Your plant needs sunlight! A very common pink plant, called Perle Von Nurnberg, is very pink, but without enough sunlight it can range between green and blue. If your plant starts growing very fast towards a window, and it quickly gets a long stem, it needs more sunlight. Most plants grow wide as well as up, not just horizontally. Don’t let your plant stretch!

4. Too Much Sunlight

If you happen to know the name of your plant, it might be a good idea to look it up. Plants that are too hot, and get too much sunlight quickly turn brown and dry up. A problem I had not experienced with any of my plants until they were hit by a heat wave (so maybe watch out for that.) If you’re not sure what your plant is, keep an eye on it for a couple of weeks. Some plants that don’t like a lot of full sun are aloe plants, Aloe Arista, and Aloe Vera. Generally most cacti or succulents with spines are good with full sun.

5. Soil Change (Rarer)

Most cute little plants that you see on instagram don’t stay little forever. They turn into big gorgeous plants. Changing the soil once a year will help feed your plant, and you should give it a bigger pot if it needs one. This only needs doing once a year, the best time is usually late spring or summer. Don’t move your plants soil in the winter. Think about what soil you choose. You can change your succulent using special desert mud, or if you’re looking for something a little cheaper, you can just use regular stones (tiny ones). It’s not the same thing, but it does reduce the amount of water, so it works the same for the most part. Alternatively if your plants not getting any bigger and doesn’t need a pot change, you could try adding a fertiliser.

Succulents are ‘easy’ to keep, as long as you know about it. I love keeping succulents, but I personally find a spider plant, and any normal window ledge works is the easiest to keep as I don’t have to worry about overwatering it. I’ve seen a lot of plants advertised as no sunlight, and thats not true. Most plants, need the same amount of light as most low level light succulents. Also if your thinking of getting a new house buddy from the internet make sure none of the plants you are buying are endangered, and that they’re sourced economically. Just like with exotic plants, this new fashion has left endangering wild plants.

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