After a succulent blooms, cut the flowers off decisively so they don't drain nutrients
A gardening friend asked: when a succulent you're growing sends up a flower stalk, what's the best way to handle it? Do you have to cut it off? Or is there some other use for it? And finally, how should you handle it when a succulent grows offsets? I have a succulent, a 2-3 cm Echeveria 'Little Silver Star', that has grown two offsets. Do I need to plant them separately? I'm worried the mother plant won't have enough nutrients.
Flower stalks are usually removed as soon as they first emerge, twisting them left and right to pull them out roots and all. If you wait until the stalk has grown large before removing it, it easily leaves an ugly wound on the stem. As for offsets, it depends on personal preference: if you like single-headed plants, pull them off and root the cuttings; if you like multi-headed plants, leave them to grow naturally. Cuttings are generally taken in spring and autumn.
When a succulent blooms, it means it's about to start reproducing. Reproduction consumes a great deal of nutrients, and indoors there are usually no conditions for pollinating succulents - for example, having several plants of the same variety blooming at once, or bees and butterflies pollinating them. If the flowers can't be pollinated and set seed, they'll just keep blooming and keep draining nutrients until the plant's nutrients are completely used up, or until conditions no longer allow it to bloom, and only then will it stop.
The flower stalk also grows thicker and thicker, and over time it pushes the leaves off to one side. After the stalk falls off, the leaves won't go back to where they were. This ruins the plant's shape. Changes to a succulent's form are irreversible, and often a plant that was originally very beautiful turns extremely ugly after blooming. If you're not keeping it for hand-pollination and seed, it's better to pinch off the flower stalk once it appears.
The flower stalk withers before it has even grown? Generally, potted succulents rarely bloom. If the flower stalk withers before growing large, it's due to one of three things: insufficient light, insufficient water, or an environment that doesn't meet the conditions for the succulent to reproduce. So is it good or bad for a succulent's flower stalk to grow in the middle? There's nothing good or bad about it - it's already grown, so what can you do? It depends on the type of succulent. For example, with Sempervivum 'Oddity' (hens and chicks), it dies after blooming, and even if you pinch off the flower it will keep producing offsets and flowers. If you're not pollinating it, you can pinch off the flower stalk, otherwise it uses up too many nutrients.
Whether to cut off a succulent's flowers depends on personal preference. If you look forward to the flowers and like them, keep them and just add some fertilizer. If you don't much care for them, then cut them off. The flowers of Echeveria succulents are all much the same; once you've seen them often enough, you just snip them off casually. But for succulents of certain other genera, the flowers really can be quite a pleasant surprise.
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