How to Propagate Senecio Rowleyanus, String of Pearls

Propagate Senecio Rawleyanus, String of Pearls

Now all you need to do is take about a minimum of four inches between four to six inches in this case here and using a clean pair of garden shears cut in between the two little leaves or should say peas like so.  And then you just take a number of cuttings.  It’s time I gave these long fellows a haircut anyway.  Now once you’ve got these cuttings you can take as many as you want you need to pot them up into a well-drained sandy either cactus and succulent plant mix.  Or we can make your own.

In this case I’ve used Johnny’s number two and 50% Johnny’s number two soil and 50% horticultural sand.  And there’s two methods of actually propagating these.  Now the biggest one here you can either insert them directly into the soil like so or you can wrap them round into a coil at the top and they’ll root that way.

I’m actually going to show you both methods this time.  Now if you mean certainly directly into the soil I’d recommend removing the little leaves all the peas as I call them or pearls.

You can apparently propagate these little pearls but I’ve never actually done it myself so I can’t recommend that but it’s supposed to work as well.  And the reason why you remove them obviously is because it’s better for them to root.  If they’re going into the soil they could rot and that’s why I recommend taking between 4 to 6 inches of cutting so you’ve got plenty there at least 2 inches to insert into the soil.  And then using a little dab like this I’m using a little crochet needle here tipping like so.  And I should also mention that to say also with most cactus documents you always let them callus.  Now with the String of Pearls you don’t need to do this.  You can just insert it straight into the soil.  The reason being is that the diameter of the stem is very very very fine so you don’t need to worry about letting it callous over.  So, if you can just go straight ahead and treat them as cuttings and put them straight into the soil and then straighten like so and then just push it in tuck it in nice and neatly let it hang down and then you do that with all the other ones.

Now when it comes to coiling them over pick a piece here you don’t have to worry about removing the pearls at the end.  And as you know there’s two sides the pearls.  They are coming down on the one side and on the other side where there isn’t the pearls this is where they’ll form the tiny roots.  Like you actually see the tiny little bit of a root look coming out there.  But all you need to do is just curl them in gently.  You can even leave them like that or just place them in gently tuck them in like so and the new growth will actually come from the side of the peas and eventually come up and come down.

Now they should stay on top of the soil as long as you don’t put the soil in too high and then they fall off.  But you can use it’s a safety clip and then just tuck them in if you’re worried about them popping off but they should stay in like that.

Well that’s some more we’ve put in there.  Now what you can do as I mentioned earlier is the ones that you’re coiling in the middle so you don’t want them to spring it out again is to actually get it what you can use is a paper clip.  In this case here and all you need to do is just recoil it over bend it over like so.  Because what you want to make sure is that it’s actually in contact with the soil.  But you don’t want to cover it with too much of the soil if you don’t want to encourage it to rot or anything.  And then with the two together just gently place into the soil with the paperclip and that’s keeps it all or like that.

And then obviously when it comes to watering they haven’t got roots yet you don’t wanna go mad with the watering because it would just encourage them to rot.  So I’d recommend keeping the soil and the very very surface of the soil is very very lightly moist.  Probably just spray them with a little bit of rain water until they get roots.  And they should take within them anything from a couple of weeks to a month or so.

And I want to send you loads of love and loads of happiness as always from the islands.  Oh, by the way guys I’ve also done a video on how to care for the String of Pearls plants so check the time links will be down below and until the next video guys bye.  [End of transcript]