Echeveria

Echeveria elegans grows on limestone cliffs in semi-desert Mexico, where the light is fierce, the rain is occasional and the drainage is absolute. The pale blue green rosette with its powdery bloom is a response to that: the powder is a wax coating that reflects sun and reduces water loss, and every leaf is a small reservoir. It is one of the easiest succulents to keep alive and one of the easiest to spoil the shape of, because the two things it needs, hard light and real dryness, are exactly the two things a windowsill in a temperate house tends not to provide.

Light

Four to six hours of direct sun. A south facing window in the northern hemisphere or a north facing one in the southern, and a summer outdoors if you can give it one. Under that much light the rosette stays tight and flat, the leaves keep their blue grey bloom and the tips often blush pink.

Under less, the plant stretches. The stem lengthens, the leaves point upwards rather than outwards and the rosette opens into a loose spiral. That growth never tightens again, so the answer is more light now and, in spring, cutting the top off and re-rooting it. Do not wipe the powdery bloom off the leaves; it is the plant’s sunscreen and it does not grow back on a leaf once it is rubbed away.

Water

Soak the compost until water runs from the base, then leave it alone until the compost is dry all the way through, which in a bright warm room is roughly twelve days in summer and a month in winter. Judge it by the weight of the pot rather than by the surface.

Water into the compost and not over the plant. Water that collects in the middle of a rosette sits there in still indoor air and turns into a brown rot at the growing point, and by the time you can see it the centre of the plant is gone. If you have watered from above by accident, tip the pot to drain the rosette.

Feeding and repotting

Feed two or three times across spring and summer with a weak cactus feed, and not at all from autumn to early spring. Repot every third year, in spring, into a shallow terracotta pot barely wider than the rosette. Terracotta helps here more than for most plants, because it wicks moisture out of the compost between waterings and there is very little root to draw it down.

Propagation

This is the classic leaf propagator, and it works better than it has any right to. Twist a whole leaf off sideways so that the base comes away cleanly with the stem, because a leaf torn across the middle will not root. Leave it on a dry surface out of direct sun for two or three days until the break seals over, then lay it on the surface of dry gritty mix and mist it occasionally. Roots come first, then a tiny rosette at the base, and the parent leaf shrivels away as the new plant feeds off it.

Offsets are quicker. A healthy plant produces small rosettes around its base, and one with roots of its own can be separated at repotting and potted straight into dry mix.

Ailments

A stretched rosette is a light problem and the only real cure is to start it again. Wrinkled leaves want a soak. A soft brown centre is rot from water in the rosette and is usually fatal to that plant, though offsets and leaves can be saved. Scorched patches come from too much sun too quickly. Mealybugs hide between the leaves and under the pot, and are worth looking for whenever you water. The ledger below has the rest.