Glass jar succulents
These little succulents in recycled glass jars make perfect gifts and are a great way to say thank you to teachers or pet sitting neighbours! Shop-bought succulents are often sold in clumps which are so easy to divide so you can make lots of succulent arrangements with just a few bought plants.
What you will need:
Glass jars
A selection of succulents
Small stones
Well-draining compost
Grit, pebbles, moss or bark for top-dressing
Twine
Gift tags
What you need to do:
As the glass jars won’t have a drainage hole, it is important to add plenty of pebbles to the bottom of your jars so that water can drain away from the soil. Add at least 2cm depth of stones.
Fill your jar with your compost. Succulents don’t like to stay wet so the soil needs to be well-draining. You can use purpose-made succulent and cactus compost or you can add some of sand and grit to a multi-purpose compost.
If your succulents are in clumps and have some smaller plants around the base of a larger plant, then you can separate these ‘pups’ or offsets from the mother plants by gently pulling them apart and separating the roots.
If your pups have stems, you can pull these off near to the base of the mother plant but then trim the stem on the pup so it’s only about an inch long. Ideally you should leave new offsets that have cut ends or don’t have any roots for a couple of days for the ends to callous over as this helps to prevents the end rotting in the soil. However, I have found this not to be too much of an issue if your soil is dry to begin with and you don’t water the new plant for a few days.
(You can also propagate your succulents from their leaves. To take a leaf for propagation, just gently twist the leaf cleanly off the stem. Let the end of the leaf dry out for a couple of days and then lay your leaf onto some compost. You will see roots appear in a couple of weeks and a new plant will start to form a few weeks later!)
Use a pen or dibber to make a hole in the compost for your new plant’s roots. Some of your succulents may have a lot of roots or not much at all, just make your hole as big as needed. Gently place the succulent in the centre and cover the roots completely by adding more soil. Make sure the leaves of the succulent sit completely above the soil, to prevent rotting.
If the mouth of your jar is wide enough, you could make an arrangement of different succulents or one large plant with a couple of smaller ones.
Once your succulents are planted, add some grit as a top-dressing. You could also use small pebbles, bark or moss.
Tie a long piece of twine around the lip of your jar once, attach your gift tag, and then wrap the rest of the twine around leaving enough to tie off with a bow.
If your new plants already have roots, then you can lightly water them and they are ready to gift! If any of the new plants don’t have any roots, then leave watering for at least a couple of days and ideally wait a bit longer before gifting so the new succulents have a bit of time to establish.
These are so pretty that I had to keep one for myself!
Author: Denise Hope, home educating mum of two young people