10 Tips for Indoor Succulent Care

The ten habits

1. Repot out of nursery soil in week one. Almost every succulent is sold in dense peat-based soil suited to a greenhouse, not a windowsill. Moving it into dry gritty mix on arrival prevents most of what goes wrong later.
2. Water by weight, not by calendar. Lift the pot. A watered pot and a dry one feel obviously different, and after two rounds you will never need a schedule again.
3. Soak fully, then stop entirely. Water until it runs out of the bottom, empty the saucer, then leave it. Frequent small sips keep the surface damp and the deep roots thirsty.
4. Put them in the brightest window you own. On the sill, not a metre back. Light falls off sharply with distance, and stretched growth never reverses.
5. Turn each pot a quarter every couple of weeks. Ten seconds of work that keeps rosettes symmetrical instead of leaning permanently toward the glass.
6. Choose pots barely bigger than the plant. Terracotta if you can, always with a drainage hole. Spare substrate the roots cannot reach is just stored water.
7. Halve the water in winter and stop feeding. Dormant plants drink far less. Watering a resting succulent on a summer rhythm is the classic January loss.
8. Feed lightly, and only in growth. Two or three half-strength feeds across spring and summer. More does not make a succulent grow better, it makes it grow soft.
9. Inspect the crevices once a month. Mealybugs hide where leaves meet stem. Caught early it is one cotton bud of rubbing alcohol; caught late it spreads through the shelf.
10. Propagate the ones you love. Take a cutting or separate a pup every spring. Backups cost nothing, and it is the best way to learn how these plants actually behave.

Four pieces of advice to ignore

• “Add gravel at the bottom for drainage.” It does the opposite. A coarse layer under fine soil raises the saturated zone up into the roots.
• “Water with an ice cube.” A trickle of cold water that wets only the top centimetre, chills the roots and never reaches the bottom of the pot.
• “Mist them daily.” Misting suits cuttings that have not rooted yet. On an established succulent it wets the leaves and invites rot in the crown.
• “They thrive in low light.” They tolerate it, briefly, and then stretch. Shop tags say this because it sells plants, not because it is true.

Recommended — Molly’s Succulent & Cactus Mix: pumice, lava rock and bark, pre-rinsed and pH-balanced, so habit number one takes ten minutes and no measuring.

A five-minute monthly check

Succulents fail slowly, which is precisely why problems get missed. One pass along the shelf each month catches nearly everything while it is still trivial to fix.

• Lift every pot. Anything still heavy three weeks after watering is holding too much moisture. Check the substrate.
• Look under the leaves. Crevices and undersides first. That is where mealybugs and scale start.
• Squeeze the base of the stem. Firm is healthy. Any softness means rot is already moving up from the roots.
• Turn each pot a quarter. Do it as you go, and while you are there pull off any dead lower leaves.

Common questions

Habit number one, made easy

Pumice, lava rock and bark — pre-rinsed and pH-balanced, so repotting takes ten minutes and no measuring.

Shop Molly’s Succulent Mix → · Take the free Soil Finder quiz →

Keep reading: The gritty mix that drains in seconds · Growing succulents indoors · Succulent & cactus care