Growing pachyphytum well

[HaoBao]

Does anyone on here grow pachyphytum well and know how to encourage leaves to be rounder?

Would more regular watering, less fertiliser and more light improve it or something else?

Some of mine are a bit etiolated and I don’t know if it’s from too much fertiliser, watering at the wrong time of year, not enough light or everything combined.

[StevenT]

Maximum light IS needed.
I think the shape of the leaves on your plants is ok (compare them with images on the Web). But the yellowing and darker patches of the outer leaves are not good - it appears those leaves are starting to die prematurely. Do you keep them dry in the winter? Pachyphytums do need some moisture through the winter to keep the roots alive.

Is that a top dressing of what appears to be akadama? Or is the whole potful like that? If it's all like that, then it is far too coarse and will not keep their roots alive.

if providing good light for your plants is a problem, then it would be better to move away from having a mixed collection and, instead, grow mainly plants which do well in less bright situations. Haworthias and gasterias are the obvious choices - there are lots of them and a society for them too as I think you will know.

Steven

[Stuart]

I'd be quite happy if I had some yellow leaves on my plants, it's a sort of unstable variegation which eventually repairs itself and grows out. There is a fine line between a variegated plant and a sick plant but this looks like variegation. There's a similar variegated P.Compactum which will produce variegated plants from leaves, it looks like the leaves in the photo are producing some variegated plants but it does have a bad habit of reverting to normal.
Stuart

[HaoBao]

Hi Steven, thanks for having a look, I’m not sure which leaves you mean when you say they are dying early though, there are a couple of orange/yellow leaves on the right side of the last photo, but I don’t know which ones are darker.

I tend to water these whenever their leaves wrinkle underneath, usually every 3-4 weeks I guess. The soil they’re in is just akadama and I’ve been looking at what to switch it to for a while now and have been testing some different types and sizes.

This is what I’m thinking of, some more quicker drying material mixed in and a bit smaller too.

I did make a mistake of getting addicted and buying too many different plants (Partly Stuart’s fault at my first BCSS show and his eBay shop haha, he did warn me that it’s addictive though to be fair) I have a bunch of haworthia that seem ok on their own shelf, they have two LED tube lights above them whereas the other plants have got 3. The haworthia are just taking on a bit of colour and are growing more compact so I think they are ok now in their new spot.

For the other plants like Pachyphytum and Echeveria I’m still wondering if the lights are ok. Someone else told me I was fertilising too much so I thought I’ll cut down on that and see what happens. My whole collection has been moving around a bit recently, moving house, getting a bit neglected, and then getting different lights so it’s a bit hard to tell, especially as they grow so slowly.

Stuart, please don’t tell me they revert to normal haha, I’m worried now, this was my special plant. I might have to try making some more props.

[StevenT]

OK. Well, to me all variegated plants look sick! Very sick...!

I have no experience of growing under lights, but I presume you saw the article on growing echeverias under lights in a recent CactusWorld?

[HaoBao]

Im afraid I didn’t see the article, I have only a few copies of Cactusworld as I haven’t been a member for long and I have some missing too after moving house which doesn’t help. Do you know if it was written by the BCSS member Lisa from Scotland?