Succulents are pretty straightforward plants when it comes to taking care of them. You put them in a cute pot, add some water when you remember (a plant killers best dream), and leave them in some sunlight. I live in an apartment and I’m quickly running out of window sills for my succulents. Oh, and you can forget about even having a place to put them outside for the 6-8 months that are actually warm enough to keep plants outdoors. Here is the story of some of my struggles and a few of the tips and tricks I’ve learned when it comes to keeping succulents indoors.
Planting
When it comes to succulents, you can plant them in just about anything, although I would highly recommend staying away from containers that don’t have drainage holes, ie. glass containers that a good 2/3rds of my succulents are housed in. I was a sucker for the glass bowls and I loved how they looked with layers of sand and rocks. I layered all of that in the pretty glass bowls and cups and had the cutest succulents. This was all fine, until it came time to water my succulents. All of the plants I had had up to that point, had died because of over-watering. This also became an issue with my new succulent babies. Take it from me, you want drainage holes. My plants were fine for the first month or so, until the roots had been sitting in water for weeks and began to rot.
Let’s talk about soil. When I first got my succulents, I planted them in whatever soil I had laying around from my family garden. Bad idea. That soil was meant to hold water in, and actual cactus and succulent soil is not (something this over-waterer needed). Buy yourself a good cactus/succulent soil.
While you’re at it, look into activated charcoal and the benefits of mixing it in your succulent soil. It will help with filtration, draining, odors, and basically everything you need. Talk about good vibes for your succulents. I’ve recently started adding it in and actually re-planted all of my succulents to give them some fresh soil and mix in that charcoal. Which reminds me that I should probably do that again soon.
Watering
Be careful with water. Succulents are such low maintenance plants and one of the only real things that can harm them is too much water. I don’t think I’ve ever really been able to keep house plants alive because I forget to water them. When I got succulents, I would remember to water them every few days, weeks or however long it was, but I would over water them! I also didn’t know that you shouldn’t always keep the soil a little damp like most other plants. I learned the hard way when some of my succulents started dying because their roots were sitting in water and rotting.
A safe rule that I’ve had to learn over the years is to only water when the soil is completely dried out. This also helps to stress the roots out a little and actually ends up making them stronger. How much you need to water depends on the climate of where you live, but you’ll get the hang of it eventually. I generally water my succulents once every 1-2 weeks. Something that is really popular with succulents is using a spray bottle to water them. I don’t actually recommend this! You should give your plants a good dousing of water, spray bottles just don’t cut it.
Sunshine
So remember when I said that succulents are really only harmed by too much water. I lied. Too much direct sunlight can also be harmful. I have the opposite problem. I have three window sills in my small apartment and they barely get any direct sunlight. I actually wish they got just a little more light. But you do what you can.
One problem I did have was with my Marimo Moss ball and my Tillandsia Air Plant. If you don’t know what that these are, you can check out my post on these cute little plants here. Neither one of them really like direct or even slightly direct sunlight and prefer to sit on the desk on the other side of my room or else they will start turning brown.
