Have you done the preparatory work for getting your succulents through the summer?

Everyone who grows succulents knows that summer is a nightmare period for most of these fleshy plants. One wrong move and they may never wake up from that dream, leaving you to collect nothing but empty pots in autumn. So it is very necessary to do the preparatory work before getting through the summer. Below, Xiao Jingzhi Life will discuss with you what preparatory work needs to be done before summer arrives.

The first thing is a suitable environment for getting through the summer. Good ventilation, indirect scattered light and coolness are all indispensable. Those in the cheat-mode regions may feel this is no big deal, but after all, the cheat-mode regions are only that tiny bit of Yunnan and the coastal area of Shandong. If you are not in a cheat-mode region, then you had better quickly prepare shade nets, rain boards and electric fans, and artificially build a summer resort where there is no direct sun scorching, no rain soaking, and it is also ventilated and cool.

Once the summer resort is built, start dividing up the rooms. The rooms should not be assigned randomly either; they need to be divided according to how delicate they are. For example, difficult summer survivors like Echeveria 'Red Velvet', Echeveria derenbergii, Echeveria 'Little Blue', Pachyphytum 'Sweden Monster' and Lapidaria margaretae need to be given preferential treatment, with the most ventilated and coolest good spots chosen for them first. Then there are the old, weak, sick and disabled, such as those recently potted or those with pests and diseases, which also need to be placed in better spots. After that come the common, tougher varieties that have been grown outdoors for a long time; these can be placed a little more casually.

After the external environment is taken care of, you also need to strengthen the succulents themselves. For example, dead leaves need to be cleaned away, otherwise once it is hot and humid they can easily breed small insects; flower stalks also need to be pinched off, because the flower stalks themselves consume nutrients and also easily attract small insects; for stems densely packed with side shoots, the small pups also need to be properly thinned out, because if the density is too high it may create a stuffy, humid micro-environment that leads to black rot; and for those without top dressing, cover them in advance with a light-colored medium, because top dressing can speed up the evaporation of water from the potting soil and will not let too much water remain on the surface of the potting soil and cause the succulents to turn to mush and rot.

In addition, you should prepare more insecticides and fungicides that every home should have. Huahuashen, carbofuran, Jiebizhi, acetamiprid, and also non-medicinal yellow sticky boards; these are mainly for treating pests such as mealybugs, aphids, mites, mosquitoes and flies, as well as fungus-preventing medicines such as carbendazim, mancozeb and thiophanate-methyl. When spraying the above medicines, be careful to control the concentration according to the instructions; too dilute has no effect, and too concentrated harms the succulents. Also prepare more 75% alcohol, which can be used to contact and kill mealybugs, but be careful not to pour it directly into the potting soil.

Apart from these, it is recommended to propagate more succulents yourself in spring and autumn, so that if one that cannot make it through dies, it still has brothers and sisters; then control your desire to buy, and wait until after summer to splurge. Beheading or similar in summer is basically courting death, so if there is no necessary reason, hold off on that too. One more thing that must be said is that in summer, if a succulent grows leggy, then just let it grow leggy; at worst, in autumn you can strip the leaves and make a fake old stump, which is still better than dying.

In addition, please pay attention to the previous articles published by Xiao Jingzhi Life about getting succulents through the summer:

Beginner flower growing: Those "certain to die in summer" succulents you bought in spring, you need to start paying attention now

Beginner flower growing: These 9 ways succulents die in summer, how many have you done?

Summer is coming; here are eight plants recommended to accompany you through the scorching heat, the hotter the better!

Thank you all for reading, and I hope it is helpful to you.

Compiled and published by Xiao Jingzhi Life.