Aeonium Rosette Succulent Plant Care

Preparing the Soil

• Loosen garden soil and add equal parts sphagnum and sand for drainage if your aeoniums are to be planted outdoors. Fill a terra cotta pot that has a drainage hole with equal parts garden soil, sphagnum and coarse sand and mix well if you are going to bring your aeonium indoors during the winter.

Light Requirements

• Plant your aeoniums in an area that gets direct sun for no more than half the day and dappled sunlight the rest of the day. Dig a hole in your prepared soil just large enough for the aeonium's root ball and plant it no deeper than it was previously planted. Press the dirt around it gently. The same thing applies to an aeonium being planted in a pot. Place the pot where the plant will get plenty of morning sun but have dappled sun in the late afternoon.

Watering

• Water your aeonium so that the ground is damp but there is no standing water. Standing water will result in root or crown rot. Allow the ground to dry between waterings. Water whenever the leaves begin to droop. Water more in the spring and early summer when the plant is doing most of its growing, and water less in the winter when the rosettes begin to close and the plant begins to go dormant.

Protect Your Plants From Frost

• Aeonium succulents can often stand one or two nights of frost per year, but if cold weather is predicted for any length of time, protect the plants with a plastic covering designed to hold in heat, or they must be moved indoors and placed near a window with a southern exposure that provides the plants with plenty of sunlight during the day. The slightly cooler temperatures of winter should encourage your plants to bloom.

Propagation

• Aeoniums are easy to propagate with cuttings or even individual leaves that are cut when green -- ideally in spring after all possibility of frost is past -- and pressed into the same soil/sphagnum/sand mixture that the parent plant has been growing in. Keep the cutting damp until it shows signs of growth, then treat it as you do the parent plant.