How to Grow Succulents? Teach You the Correct Care Methods
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The adorable little succulents have very high demands when it comes to controlling air humidity, so let's take a look together!
1. Air humidity requirements for each season: Maintaining a certain level of air humidity during the growing season is quite important. When the plant enters its growing season, the role of air humidity at this time is obvious. Species native to tropical rainforests have even stricter requirements. Some horticultural varieties with rich color changes will display more vivid colors if considerable air humidity can be maintained. It can be said that basically most varieties need a certain level of humidity at this time. During the dormant period, however, air humidity must be managed with considerable caution, and the first to be affected are some summer-dormant varieties with a high degree of succulence. For example, summer in Shanghai is typical "hot and humid" weather. Highly succulent varieties of the family Aizoaceae are quite prone to rot. How to get old varieties like Lithops and Dinteranthus through the summer is often the most headache-inducing problem for enthusiasts. Likewise, winter-dormant varieties also need to maintain a certain degree of dryness. This point deserves considerable attention once the temperature drops below 5°C. When the temperature continues to fall to 0°C or lower, high humidity at this time is often fatal and can kill a plant overnight. However, most cities in the north are relatively dry in winter. This kind of "damp and cold" climate is more common in some southern cities in China.
2. Air humidity during the seedling stage: Air humidity during the seedling stage is particularly important, and its significance exceeds that of soil moisture. This is because there is a process of "hardening off seedlings" during the seedling stage. The purpose of controlling the water in the soil is to encourage new roots to grow, and maintaining relatively high air humidity at this time can prevent the seedlings from suffering water shortage due to hardening off. Generally, the air humidity requirements during the seedling stage are higher than at other growth stages, but air humidity at this time is also the hardest to manage. Practice has proven that the smaller the seed, the relatively smaller the seedling, and the poorer its resistance, often making it unable to tolerate high humidity. Typical examples are most varieties of the family Aizoaceae, and some varieties of the family Crassulaceae (with Begonia semperflorens being the most prominent). Once the plants are established, this phenomenon will greatly improve, and the problem of air humidity will not be so prominent.
3. Air humidity requirements for asexual propagation: The two commonly used methods of asexual propagation at home are cuttings and grafting. Cuttings: Plant organs should be kept dry for the first few days after being separated from the parent plant. This time period depends on the variety. It can be as short as 4 or 5 days or as long as a month, and once the wound is completely dry, it can be inserted into the substrate. At this point, relatively high air humidity can be maintained. On this point, there are mainly two schools of thought: one advocates creating a dry environment, which allows rooting in a shorter time but consumes more energy. The other advocates creating a humid environment, and this method consumes less from the cutting itself. As for grafting, opinions are relatively unified: during the first two weeks after grafting is completed, dryness and ventilation must be maintained, as excessively high humidity will affect the survival rate of the graft.
4. For certain caudiciform varieties such as Dioscorea elephantipes, bitter gourd types, and Sarcocaulon, their surfaces in their places of origin are often irregularly cracked and mostly uneven. However, under artificial cultivation, especially when domestication begins from seedlings, their uneven surfaces become very indistinct. But the reason is not only a matter of humidity; it is a comprehensive issue. This point is also an auxiliary basis used by some experienced enthusiasts to judge between wild and artificially cultivated plants.
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