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Gardening

Find tips and tricks to make your garden or allotment flourish on our Gardening forum.

My paddle plant

5 replies

cornflakes5 · 25/07/2019 15:29

My paddle plant almost died a couple of years ago, but did a Lazarus. It's now alive, but in crisis mode - it has developed an almost sideways lean.

Obviously it did this to get more sunlight. By the time I realised it was a problem and tried to rectify it, it was already top heavy and resistant to leaning the other way.

What do I do now? Should I repot? Let it lean and eventually fall over? Thank you in advance, fellow house plant enthusiasts.

My paddle plant
OP posts:
cornflakes5 · 25/07/2019 16:18

Please! Any gardener out there?

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NanTheWiser · 25/07/2019 16:27

I'm assuming this is Kalanchoe thyrsiflora, and you have identified the problem as lack of light. Being a succulent plant, it really needs as much light as you can give, not often possible indoors.
Left alone, it will just keep growing longer and eventually topple over.
What you could do, is cut the top off, below a pair of leaves, and root it up to create a new plant. To do this, leave the cutting to callus (dry out) for about a week, then rest it on top of some dry, very gritty compost in a shady spot, and it should start to send out roots in a week or two, when you can lightly water it. Once it is well rooted, pot up in gritty compost, and place on your sunniest windowsill, where it should grow much more compact, and maybe take on some reddish coloration. It's best not to keep the pot in a pot cover, as it's too easy to overwater such plants which would be fatal.
The original plant should then send out new offsets from the stem which can also be removed and rooted.

cornflakes5 · 25/07/2019 19:05

Thank you! It's right next to a large window in a brightly lit livingroom. I water it sparsely. How can it still not be happy Blush

OP posts:
NotMaryWhitehouse · 26/07/2019 08:14

Good advice above. The leaves look healthy enough- can it not go on an actual windowsill though?

cornflakes5 · 26/07/2019 08:56

It's pretty much on the window sill. It's a Victorian house, so don't have sills as such. The plant is on a table right next to the window.

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