Hello - Montana -

do not do anything - let them grow. Sometimes the sleeping bud comes up on the stem or in the middle of the leaf. If you let it grow to the good size - you can separate the plantlet from momma - and it will root as soon as it touches soil - provided you would bag the pot.

Interesting, isn't it?

Irina

MiM, my first set of leaves produced in multiple ways. Some only from the soil. Others only from the stem. Some produced from stem AND soil. One thing I noticed is that once you get a couple, don't discount more. Up until 2 months after the first mouse ears, I have additional ones starting.

It really is fascinating...and hard when you're new because it doesn't follow an exact path!

Well, thanks to both of you. It did seem somewhat odd, but I knew I could get clarification here. You said it well, Lath, doesnÂt follow an exact path, but it seems it is my personal experiance that most plants I grow *don't follow the exact path*.

My sis tried different methods of leaf propagation, with 100% failure. So when I read here on how to do it, I gave her some of the leaves I put down, hers did very well, much quicker than mine did. Sadly, she potted them up way too soon, and in a grossly over-sized pot. They didn't make it. But, she's learning and I will share some of these babies with her as well as some future leaves.

This IS fun, BTW, the mamma I took these from in hopes to get flowers, is on it's second bloom since the makeover. I love this :)

Hi MIM,
I would p ut a bit more soil mix in the pot just to the point where the new plantlet touches it. I will root and grow into a samll plant. You can separate it when the leaves are a bit larger.
Fred n nj

I keep reading different "signs" for when to pot plantlets. I think the best one was as article I found called Don Geiss' Babies to Adult Plants.

In it, he said, "Often the question is asked on the Internet, when do you remove the babies from the mother leaf? The answer is when the individual cluster of leaves indicate that they have formed a plant."

Hmmm, interesting. Then he wrote, "Having said that, let me elaborate a little so that the term individual cluster of leaves is more understandable. When the baby leaves begin to emerge from the soil they simply look like a hodgepodge of greenery. As they enlarge over a period of days and weeks the leaves begin to shape into better defined clusters.
When one picks up the pot and spreads the clusters it should begin to look like a number of tiny leaves are formed from a single stem. If it does not look that way it is too early to cut them apart because cutting into the mass may result in a gob of soil with more than one plant. In most cases some baby plants are cut through the middle because the individual plants have not yet been well defined."

This finally made sense to me. I'd read dime size, or nickel size or 2 months or 6 months...but that was predicated on something else that wasn't defined. But, this is simply saying, look at the plant and see if you can tell that it's its own plant.

Well, usually when they get to the stage of having leaves that are about dime sized, they look like a mini plant. However, I've had plantlets that looked like mini plants but had leaves far smaller than dime sized. Even though they looked like individual plants, I wasn't comfortable separating them at that size. Honestly, I let them go as long as I feel like. If it's only one baby, I've let them go until the parent leaf faded away. Right now, I haven't anywhere to go with some of mine, so I'm leaving them be. A rearranging is in the works soon, where I will be repotting and wicking plants. I'll figure out then where things will go, and hopefully I can make room for some of my baby plants that are just waiting to find a space of their very own.