Succulent pruning methods: How do succulents propagate?

  If you find that one of your succulents has grown very leggy and has no new side shoots, making it look quite unattractive, then you can start to reshape it. In the image below, either of the two circled spots can be cut. After cutting, pull off the excess leaves, and they can be used as leaf-cutting propagation material. With fewer main leaves on the stem cutting, it is easier for the plant to re-root and propagate. Take Sedum pachyphyllum (jelly bean plant) as an example; the bare stem below clearly shows that all the leaves were pulled off to use as leaf-cutting material.

  After chopping it off, there is no need to worry that the remaining bare stem will look too ugly; new tender shoots will gradually emerge. The time is about 10 days or so, and depending on the variety, the time for new shoots to appear also differs. And if you are lucky, 2-3 or even more new shoots often emerge, and it suddenly turns into a multi-headed monster (actually, I think it looks quite nice as a single plant like this too).

  Pruning, in most cases, should be applied to trees and shrubs or woody and herbaceous flowers. Most succulents have no obvious main trunk and no obvious branches. So shaping and pruning work is not particularly important, but timely and reasonable pruning can lower the plant shape, promote branching, make succulents grow more robustly and have a more graceful shape, and at the same time the pruned branches can also be used for re-propagating succulents. Common pruning of succulents includes pinching, thinning branches, hard pruning, removing spent flowers, removing buds, root trimming, and so on.

  1. Pinching:

  Through pinching, succulents are encouraged to branch more, form more flower buds, bloom more, and have a more compact, dwarfed plant shape. Pinching is cutting off the top of the succulent's stem, above the leaves. It is suitable for Kalanchoe blossfeldiana, Cotyledon tomentosa (bear's paw), Tradescantia sillamontana (white velvet), Senecio radicans, Ceropegia woodii (string of hearts), and so on.

  2. Thinning branches:

  The main purpose is to keep the succulent's shape neat in appearance. Generally speaking, focus on pruning overly dense overlapping branches, irregular crossing branches, unusable leggy branches and basal sprouting branches, as well as dead branches, diseased and pest-infested branches, and so on. It is suitable for plants of the Crassulaceae family, genus Graptopetalum, plants of the Geraniaceae family, genus Sarcocaulon, and Sedum pachyphyllum. The pruning period is best after flowering or after leaf fall.

  3. Hard pruning:

  Also called heading back, it requires cutting off the entire plant or pruning 10-20 cm from the base of the main trunk, to encourage new branches to sprout from the base of the main trunk or the roots. It is often used for succulents that are too tall or whose growth vigor is extremely weak, and is suitable for Euphorbia tirucalli (pencil cactus), Euphorbia trigona (African milk tree), Pachypodium lameriei (Madagascar palm), Pedilanthus tithymaloides (devil's backbone), and so on.

  4. Removing spent flowers:

  For succulents that are not being kept for seed, spent flowers should be cut off in time, so as to avoid consuming too much nutrients for seed production and to help the formation of new flower branches. This is too broad, so I won't give examples.

  5. Removing buds (including disbudding):