Of all my plants, I have one prized plant… my top favorite! Three years ago, I bought a Peporomia obtusifolia from Walmart. It was a small guy, sitting on a discount cart near the gardening section.
I had no idea how to care for succulents, so it died almost immediately when it came home.
Fortunately, succulents are easy to propagate, and can be very forgiving with the proper care. In fact, many succulents grow new roots from dropped leaves. Upon seeing my dying plant, I saved a leaf and stuck it in a pot of soil. It must have been a strong leaf with good DNA, because it took root and continued to grow, and grow, and grow.
Now it’s very happy and healthy, with a lot of stems.
Over the years, I continued to propagate the plant. This pep plant grows tall and leggy, so it needs a pruning maybe once or twice a year. There are two easy ways to take cuttings from a pep plant.
Option 1. Cut a stem and place it in a jar of water. You can add a splash of peroxide to the water to sterilize and also provide more oxygen to the plant. If the stem has nodes, it has a great chance of growing new roots. It may take a couple of months. After the roots grow at least an inch long, it’s safe to plant it in soil. If the roots have fine, white fibers over them, that’s all the better! The fibers help the roots with oxidation.
Option 2. Cut leafs, or take a dropped leaf from the plant. Ideally, the leaf should have some stem on it, and it helps if the stem is connected to a node for root growth. Let the leaf cutting air dry for a few days, so the injury heals and scabs over. I like to dip the cut parts in cinnamon to prevent infections. After a few days, the leaf should be safe to plant in soil.
Here are leaves I planted maybe three months ago? I was surprised and happy to see new leafs sprouting. I think they are ready to go into pots.
Right now they are sitting in an ice cube tray. The tray is a nice size for little seeds and cuttings.
Here are other leaves I planted a while ago. Some pots have two plants (see the two leafs). I would like to separate them into different pots because their roots are probably nice and big now. The taller plants are older, mature plants. I pruned them in the past because they were getting tall.
Here is a close up of the cute sprouts in the ice tray. After taking the plant out, you can see the roots. I bet they will grow bigger in a bigger pot.
A surprise! Some of the leafs had a little sprouts growing. Those sprouts are new baby leafs. Although it seemed like there was no activity above soil, there was new growth happening beneath the soil. In another couple weeks, those baby leafs would have sprouted above soil, too.
There is a local store in town called Water’s Edge. They have the neatest flower pots, both large and small. Ian got me some flower pots from there in the past for my plants. Unfortunately, the store is closing down, so they are having a huge clearance sell on all their inventory. They are being very careful and only allowing a few people inside at a time, so I had to go on a week-long waiting list.
They gave me a call when it was finally my turn. I picked up these rectangle bonsai pots and trays seen above. I don’t own any bonsai, but the pots are perfect for smaller plants.
The pots had huge drainage holes on the bottom, so I partially covered them with rocks.
All the leafs have their own pots now. Excellent! My plant army is growing. Sometimes you have to get creative with flower pots. The tiny round pot in the top right is actually an old candle holder.
Here are older peperomia cuttings… maybe a year old? They need some TLC. I planted two leafs together in each pot, and they are growing out of control. There isn’t enough space for two plants per pot. They really should be separated.
If you look closely near the center, you can see the traffic jam. Stems are jammed together, and leafs are getting crushed. There is no room for them to spread out as they grow bigger. This is good motivation to keep new cuttings in different pots, as seen a moment ago. The cuttings may seems small at the start, but eventually they do grow big and may compete with each other for space.
After removing from the pot, we see tangled roots. It took me a long time to separate the plants. A lot of wiggling the dirt off and gently pulling the roots apart. I worried that they’d be impossibly tangled, but they separated eventually.
The plants look nice separated. The fourth plant is in another pot not pictured here. They look much better. I noticed they appear uneven, because the leafs that used to be in the center (smashed against the other plant) are smaller. Hopefully they will grow more and even out.
I have one more plant that needed TLC for the day. This peperomia grew tall and leggy. It’s so tall that it flopped over and cannot stand on its own. It needs a pruning. My hope is that by pruning tall plants, they will regrow new stems and leafs near the bottom and become denser.
After pulling the plant out of the of the pot, I see that I already pruned it once before. The plant was leggy back then, too, and I buried some of the stem into the soil. It’s interesting to see all the roots growing from the stem. Plants can be so versatile, adapting to new situations.
In the top right photo, I show where I’m making the cuts. Basically, I’m cutting into the nodes, so new roots can grow out of there.
After the pruning is finished, the plant is much shorter! I think this is a good size for it. The five cuttings are on the right. I’m going to dip the cut portions into cinnamon for protection, then let the cuttings air dry for a few days. I will plant them into soil after that.
The pruned plant gets a cute new pot. You might recognize this red pot from a previous blog post (it belonged to Ian’s plant Monday). The pot size is small and better suited for this plant. The leaf cuttings sit on another plant tray to dry out.
It was a lot of work, but I think the pep plants are in better containers now. This is what the plants in my home office look like. They sit beneath a plant light connected to a timer, so the light automatically turns on and off during the day. The only thing I have to worry about is watering the plants on a weekly basis.
They started on the bookshelf in the back, but after a couple years of propagation, the plants spread to the coffee table in the front. To think all these cuttings came from one plant… it’s pretty amazing! I am happy the cuttings are doing well.