Millennials may have re-ignited America's love affair with houseplants, but you don't have to be one of them to want your own succulent garden. Nor do you have to be a millionaire – or even well off.
If you have the money, it's always an option to buy a living work of art like a vertical succulent wall hanging or elaborate dish garden and limit your involvement to learning how to take care of succulents. But it's also possible to create a succulent garden on the cheap in Atlanta. Just follow these basic tips and strategies to amass cost-effective succulent planter components:
Choose indoor or outdoor: Your goal in learning how to take care of succulents cost-effectively means choosing ones that will live, so you don't have to keep paying to replace them. A shortcut is figuring out which varieties thrive outdoors in Georgia, and which ones are strictly indoor plants. According to Jake Hill in LawnStarter, these succulents are good for beginners who will be planting in Atlanta:
Echeveria with its fleshy rosettes in "tones of blues, greens, deep purples, some with red tips, or wavy leaves." Slow growing and reaching 12 inches tall max, LawnStarter noted echeveria can be "grown outside in the summer and indoors during the colder months. Some do better in the cold than others."
Crassula, which has 130 varieties including jade plants and grows indoors in bright light.
Sempervivum, also known as hens and chicks, which grows super fast and multiplies freely. But they do need full sun and well-draining soil. They also prefer the great outdoors, where they can be perennials.
Sedum is super easy to grow. You can literally poke a stem into a rock in the garden and it will root. But though many varieties look like the same stuff you see in indoor rock gardens, they're not. "Low growing types are great for rock gardens whereas the taller varieties are great for perennial borders. This is another succulent that prefers full sun," advised Lawnstarter. "Upright varieties like 'Autumn Joy' and 'Matrona' are perennials that bloom in the summer and fall."
Aloe is "one of the most popular indoor plants/succulents. Many people keep it in their kitchen to help with burns. It's been used as a first-aid medicinal plant since the ancient times. There are over 450 varieties of Aloe with diverse forms and sizes, some only a few inches tall to larger species with stout, 60-foot trunks," according to Lawnstarter. This is the succulent for all seasons: grown outdoors in summer, brought inside for the cooler months.
Credit: Contributed by All Things Succulents/Facebook
Credit: Contributed by All Things Succulents/Facebook
Buy succulents inexpensively. No one is going to fault you if you make an impulse purchase of an entire succulent garden lovingly arranged in a porcupine-shaped planter. But when you're trying to grow succulents on the cheap, you'll want to seek out less expensive sources.
Etsy is a good source of low-price succulents because it's a trend for brides and grooms to give them as wedding favors. Just make sure to avoid faux succulents (unless you want a couple to hold space while your own grow to a good size. And for your first purchase, you may want an easy-care succulent such as air plants, which can live through months of drought and won't be harmed by a little shipping. (And while you're on Etsy, check out the trendy succulent wedding bouquets to see just how far this DIY succulent kick could take you.)
Another good source of inexpensive plants is Facebook Marketplace and local garage sales. People sell even full-grown aloes and easy-to-divide hens and chicks for anywhere from $2 to about $10, well below retail, even at a home store.
Opt for repurposed planters. Southern Living brags that succulent gardens are usually able to survive triple-digit temperatures, not to mention owners who forget to water. That means that almost any type of container is fair game for planting, as long as you use soil with drainage and have a drainage hole in the bottom. So you can ultimately repurpose anything you can come up with and still look like you know how to care for succulents. They don't need babysitting or expensive artisan pottery, just clay pots and anything else you can find that is attractive and holds moist soil.
If you don't have your own unused pie plates and containers that came with flowers in the hospital, try Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist and local garage sale websites. There you can find other people's glazed ceramic casserole dishes, Asian porcelain collectibles and such at a fraction of the cost of buying them at a home store or nursery. Who knows? You may even find some actual planters.
And if you don't have the stamina or the schedule to scour, consider a quick trip to a salvage or discount store. Opt for plain glass or clay pots so your DIY succulent garden doesn't look tacky. Besides, with all the varieties available, the plants themselves will be providing the splashy color.
Start your own plants. While it's certainly possible to buy fully grown succulents, some of them several feet tall, it's far more economical to grow your own from cuttings, bare root clumps or even seed. The way they come alive from a dead-looking start is kind of like those "just add water" Sea Monkeys, and just as fascinating.
You can literally just set a bare root clump on top of the proper soil (see below) and within a couple of weeks, it will root. According to the Leaf and Clay blog, you may be able to start new plants by "removing an active, healthy leaf from a mature succulent plant and using it to grow a new plant. This propagation method works well with succulents that have plump, fleshy leaves like echeveria because the leaves are easy to pop off cleanly."
If you really know how to care for succulents or are diligent and keep a watchful eye on a friend's mature plants, you may get what L & C calls pups, also known as offsets. "These are the little succulents that sprout up around the base of the parent plant. These pups occur when roots bearing leaf clusters, shoot out from the mature plant and develop into a new succulent. Pups can also occur on the leaves of some succulents, like the Pink Butterfly Kalanchoe. You can use the offsets from either location to grow a new, individual plant."
Other methods of creating tiny succulents from a mother plant include rooting tiny stems in water or growing them from seed. For this last method, you'll need lots of patience.
If you're impatient, get the best of both worlds by buying one or two larger succulents for the planter and then filling in with the rooted stock as it comes along. Several online sources sell bare root stock and cuttings, including Mountain Crest Gardens. To get the very best deals, order with friends so you can buy a bag of literally 200 or so starts and split them up, all at a cost less than a single pre-planted rock garden from a nursery.
Get the right soil started. According to succulent artist and whiz kid Kurt Straudt, who owns Atlanta's Southeast Succulents, the "keep it simple" motto works well for succulent soil, and it doesn't cost much. "I use two-thirds ordinary potting soil (anything except moisture control) with one-third slate chips (you can also use pea gravel or any kind of small stone) for indoor plants or those sheltered from rain," Straudt explained on his website. "For pots on uncovered patio, I use 50/50 soil to slate chips. In succulent beds, I till gravel into the top 8-10 inches of soil at a 50/50 ratio." Straudt doesn't recommend pre-mixed cactus soils, which are more expensive anyhow.
"They stayed wet too long...perhaps because of our high humidity here in Georgia," he explained. "I have not had good results with sand either, it actually seems to make the soil sticky. I have also tried perlite and vermiculite which work, but personally I don't like the look of them."
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