2 Ways to Propagate a Kalanchoe

Kalanchoe is a succulent plant valued for its vivid, bright colors and its tightly-clustered bouquets of little flowers. The seeds from cross-pollination can produce some interesting hybrids, but there’s no guarantee that there will be a particular resemblance to the parent plants. If you want to give it a try and see what you get, seed propagation is right for you. If however you would rather have more of the same plant, you can propagate kalanchoe plants by using cuttings.

1. Seeds

When you propagate kalanchoe with seeds, you’ve got two options. The first is to purchase seeds from your local garden center or nursery, plant them and nourish them, and enjoy the surprise of color you get from your kalanchoe. The second, if you already have 2 kalanchoe or more in your perennial flower garden, is to cross-pollinate them. You can choose to crossbreed the two varieties and come up with a hybrid that can either have traits of the parent plants, traits of its own, or both. It’s always exciting to see what crossbreeding two kalanchoe plants will bring you, and what colors you’ll see in your shrub.

The kalanchoe seeds you plant can go directly into warm, slightly moist soil made of half cactus mix and half fine potting soil so that you can help with the germination process. The warmth and the humidity of the dirt will activate the seed’s growth hormones and guide the sprout towards nutrients, thus giving you a baby kalanchoe sprout.

2. Leaf Cuttings

If you want to have the exact same plant in repetition in your garden, you can propagate kalanchoe with leaf cuttings. Rooting kalanchoe cuttings isn’t difficult, and you can make it even easier if you use a little bit of root hormone on the cut ends of the leaves, known as callouses because they typically need to dry out a bit before you try to root them in soil. The soil requirements for cutting propagation is a cactus mix blended with some humus topsoil, and when you plant your leaf cutting into it, you should avoid watering the kalanchoe cutting for at least 1 week. This encourages the leaf to survive in rather dry conditions by rooting through the soil. The dirt you use should be permeable, well-drained and never overwatered.

These environmental parameters should be used until transplantation. Your plants generally won’t be ready for a permanent home in your garden until it’s about 2 or 3 years old. It needs to be between the adolescent and mature stage, so that transplanting doesn’t shock the plant to death—literally.

Whichever way you choose to propagate your kalanchoe, you can reap all of the benefits of this low-maintenance plant. You can rebloom it, you can gift adolescent plants to someone else to care for, and you can even forget to water them sometimes—they’ll forgive you, and they’ll even reward you with more blooms.