Revised: October 19, 2021
First off, I hope your lithops from my Etsy shop, Noteworthy plants, arrived in the mail. If you did, I hope they got there promptly and safely. If not, don’t worry; you may make amends by visiting my store in the future:).
It’s possible that your lithops will look dry and wrinkly when you first open them. THAT IS USUAL. This appearance is a result of the drying I must do before sending them to you. This procedure is required to stop rot and other issues from occurring during shipping. In order to prevent the lithops from “freak out” owing to the absence of light in the box, it also stops the plant’s metabolism.
If you purchased the Pick you Pot listing or a potted lithograph from the city market, the situation is slightly different. Even simpler. Less drying out will be an issue for you. I advise taking your time when unpacking them so they can settle into their new home. You might need to remove any loose soil and straighten any lithops that were bent during shipping. Depending on the stage they are in, watering will change. Give them a few light water sprays after a week or so in their new habitat while they are actively growing (not in the winter). Before considering watering once again, let that entirely dry up and then assess their reaction. Next time, experiment with using more or less water. In order to have the best control, I almost always use a spray canister. After several months, you might think about repotting. Some of the advice listed below can be used to assist with repotting.
Here are some suggestions for how to handle certain scenarios if you purchased the plants bare-root.
You want your lithops to appear lovely and plump as soon as you can, right? I can assist, but it will take time. If you adhere to a few straightforward principles, you might have a collection of lithops that are wholesome and full of life.
The photographs below display a group of lithops that are severely wrinkly on the top and the sides. If I can get these guys to heal, you should be able to get your lithops to recover as well because these are worse than anything you should ever receive in the mail, at least from me. I selected lithops that illustrated the worst-case situation. They are beginning to display some encouraging signals after 10 days in the soil using the following technique. The lithops are almost entirely rehydrated by day 13.
Success with Lithops requires good soil, also known as substrate. For more information on soil mixtures, see my article on it, although the ideal ratio for mature lithops is 40% organic, 50% coarse grit, and 10% heterogeneous sand.
If soil drying is going to be a problem for you, get a pot; terra cotta works well for this. Pots made of plastic and glaze also perform well. In a 2.5″ wide by 3.5″ deep pot, I can squeeze a ten pack of tiny 1cm (around 0.5 in) lithops or three to four larger lithops (2.5 – 3.5 cm (1 – 1.5 in)). It’s beneficial to give them greater space to develop and flourish.
Fill your pot with your lithops soil, then use a pen or pencil to make a conical hole about as deep as the length of the lithops root. In order for the lithops roots to grow as deeply as possible, carefully straighten them out (not all scrunched up on the surface). Others will have smaller roots and soon establish a new root system.
Note: It will be challenging to dig a hole that is of significant depth before it caves in if your soil is very dry and loose. As a result, planting larger lithops with longer roots may be difficult. Use a spray bottle to lightly mist the soil surface in the pot you are planning to plant in with only a couple of sprays. Light surface dampness keeps the soil in place and prevents cave-ins.
Some people favor planting one in each small pot, while others favor planting them all together in arrangements. The latter is actually closer to how they develop naturally, and some lithops growers believe that the lithops develop “better” when grouped with other lithops. It’s believed to be a form of mutualism.
WAIT before planting the lithops in dry soil. Before you water them, wait at least two days, and water them sparingly. The need for moisture is not urgent. With a few sprays of a spray bottle at the base of each lithops, you can water the plants for the first time. This is to give any injuries time to heal that might have happened during shipping or when you were planting it.
Lithops are essentially dormant during the winter. Lithops only require a modest bit of water if they are really wrinkled and you acquire them in the winter. Simply spray a tiny amount of water (from a spray bottle or squirt bottle) at the base of the lithops plant in this situation.
Give them some water when the two days are up. At start, a few sprays from a spray bottle at the base of each lithops should be sufficient. Although it’s probably not essential, a paranoid lithops grower might use cooled, boiling water (I would, lol). Any water should be suitable. Never water again until the soil is completely dry. To determine whether the area has moisture, stick your finger down there and feel for any changes in the soil’s color that indicate wetness. You may also feel the pot’s weight to determine whether the area is dry.
They will often swell up after a few days, though some may need a little longer—up to three weeks—to develop a fresh root system. There is a technique called “water treatment” that can swiftly solve your root system damage issue! In the future, I’ll go into greater detail about this approach.
General care: You should start with good soil, strong light, low humidity, and some air movement. These are the three keys to developing lithops. If all of these are optimized, overwatering becomes very challenging.
This blog has an entire section devoted to recipes and discussions about soil! In my Etsy shop, I also sell hand-mixed soil that I’ve personally optimized.
A nice south-facing window will suffice for lighting. You might need to add more light from the east or the west. Avoid the window that faces north. You might as well mount it inside your house with a led light to promote growth. It can be challenging to convert the light needs between configurations, but I find 20 watts of LEDs per foot of growing surface to be adequate.
Air: Make an effort to keep these in a dry environment. This could use some indirect air flow.
The most challenging stage for the majority of novice lithops growers is splitting, which is a crucial stage of the lithops growth cycle. No matter how much water you feed your lithops at this point, it will begin to wrinkle and might even seem to be dying. It will, however, perish if you give it a lot of water. A fresh set of leaves will nonetheless grow out of the center of the decomposing leaves if you correctly identified it as splitting and maintained the soil as dry as you could! The water and nutrients from the previous year’s crop of leaves will be recycled to help the new leaves flourish. They do not require water because of this. And if they are overwatered at this point, it could lead to “stacking,” a bad type of lithops in which leaves from prior years persist and accumulate, stacking on top of one another.
I always aim to provide you lithops that are not actively splitting, so keep that in mind. However, I have discovered that occasionally the shipping process can cause splitting, thus they might start spewing after I had already chosen them.
Although it can start as early as year 2, flowering usually starts in year 3. Give them water as usual and treat them as lithops that are actively growing. If you have multiple blooming plants at once, you can spread pollen between them by rubbing the stamens of each plant with a paintbrush. When the blossom is open, do this every day, and you will soon see a seed pod! These pods can be harvested for their seeds!
How are bare root Lithops planted?
- Plant your Lithops in shallow dish planters that are 3 to 5 inches deep to accommodate their tap roots and display them. Add a finishing touch with gravel or stones that imitate the plants.
- Terrariums shouldn’t be used to grow Lithops since the humidity there is too high for these natives of dry climates.
- Old, deteriorating leaves should not be removed because the plant is still collecting moisture from them. They will ultimately separate on their own.
- Lithops should never freeze.