Sarah Mitchell

My Christmas cactus is nothing like my desert succulents in terms of what it wants, something I learned the hard way when I first tried propagating it using the same approach that had worked well for my Echeveria. The segments rotted before rooting, and it took switching my whole approach, especially around timing, before I … Read more

Succulent leaf propagation gets talked about as nearly foolproof, and while it genuinely is easier than a lot of other propagation methods, my actual success rate across dozens of attempts with my Echeveria collection has been closer to 60-70% rather than the near-100% some sources imply. Here’s what’s actually made the difference between a leaf … Read more

My first four attempts at propagating African violets from leaf cuttings all rotted before producing a single new plant. It took genuinely embarrassing trial and error before I figured out what I was doing wrong, and once I did, the fifth attempt and every one since has worked reliably. The Method That Finally Worked I … Read more

My fiddle leaf fig has already taught me patience once, dropping leaves dramatically for months after I first brought it home before finally settling in. Propagating it turned out to demand a similar kind of patience, just applied to a completely different stage of the plant’s life. Taking the Cutting I took a cutting with … Read more

Since I started pruning my jade plant more deliberately to shape it, I’ve ended up with a steady supply of trimmings, which gave me a natural opportunity to compare leaf cuttings against stem cuttings from the exact same plant, propagated at the same time. The difference in results was bigger than I expected going in. … Read more

After losing my first string of pearls entirely to a drainage mistake, I was genuinely nervous the first time I tried propagating cuttings from my second, more successful plant. That nervousness turned out to be unnecessary — this has become one of the more forgiving propagations in my collection, once I got the basic technique … Read more

I propagated my first ZZ plant almost by accident, saving a few leaflets that snapped off during a repot rather than tossing them. That accidental batch took nearly four months to show any real growth, which sent me looking for a faster method — and division turned out to be the answer, though it came … Read more

My spider plant has produced enough plantlets over the past two years that I’ve genuinely lost count of how many new plants I’ve grown from it — somewhere north of fifteen at this point, most given away to friends who probably didn’t ask for another houseplant but seem happy to have one anyway. This is … Read more