They are doing great, I wouldn't disturb them. The 2nd pic method doesn't produce such a high success rate, in my experiments with them.

Keep up the great work!

Thanks for your answer! :) If I let them on top of the soil, when should I plant them then?

Hi Karine, I am doing the same as you and on the same step with my baby succulent pups. I have done extensive research both on this forum and off and it seems that everyone recommends waiting until the leaf you're propagating shrivels and dies (then you can easily remove it) to pot them up.

It will take a little bit of time for the main leaf to do so but be patient, the succulent babies that I have potted from propagation using this method are doing well -- if you remove the leaf any sooner, you may tear or damage the delicate roots and if you bury them, you risk them not developing more.

That's just my 2 cents from personal experience, from research and knowledge passed on to me from my grandma! :) Wishing you well on your succulent journey -- isn't it fun!?

Thank you very much! And yes it is! I just started to discover succulents and cacti and I'm in love with them! :)

Maybe I am missing the obvious, but I don't understand why you wouldn't bury the rooting tip of the leaves as soon as the leaf has a chance to callus over (usually within a day or two after it's removed from the parent plant), or, at least before a significant amount of roots are formed.

Purpleinopp said she hadn't had as much success with the method shown in the second picture, but I don't know what about that picture isn't good. I have grown hundreds of succulents of many, many different types (by burying the rooting tip of leaves) and had very nearly 100% success. The only possible difference I see is that I usually do place my leaf at a flatter angle to the potting medium surface.

Roots growing in the air don't do the cutting/plant any good. The roots need to be in the potting medium to draw in moisture and nutrients.

I'm puzzled too.

I thought with succulents you allow the leaf to dry a little before trying to root it (leave it sit around for a day or two). Then pot it and take care not to have it too moist or it might rot. It won't need mist. Once it has some roots pot it carefully.

I think I'll try both methods, because it's seems to work differently to one people to another. Thank you very much for your advice! :)

Karine, et. al - I've included my own pics to share. The little plantlet for the echeveria is not as far along nor as pretty as yours but it's a start! :)

Here are my little guys on June 18, 2015 -- I took them from my echeveria and let them callus for about a week. I put the callused cuttings on soil and waited. As soon as roots began growing, I misted the ends once a morning because the sun on my windowsill gets pretty bright and it is not treated to block UV rays. I moved them to a larger shallower pan of soil after reading more about succulent propagation and after my grandma shared her knowledge with me (aka borderline chastising me lol!):

Here they are as of this morning (July 1, 2015) - looking good and one is even sprouting a baby plantlet. When I first saw the little buds forming last weekend, I leapt for joy! :) The third leaf on the right is just starting to sprout roots and looks like the top pics.

Re: "...the tiny baby leaves have to use some energy to come up through the
soil, instead of being able to have light shining on them as they are
forming."

IME, this is not important for two reasons. First, the mother leaf has plenty of leaf surface (much, much more than the baby shoot) for photosynthesis to occur. The important missing factor are roots, and roots will form more quickly (see below) and efficiently if the rooting tip is buried. Secondly, the baby shoot will arise from the soil surface within just a few days of sprouting, so that short time that the very small shoot is buried is insignificant.
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In most if not all plants, roots form much more quickly and reliably in tissue not exposed to light. For instance, when air layering, root formation is usually better when the rooting area is covered in dark/opaque material. Now, the bottom of a leaf, left on the surface, will have less light, so maybe there's not a big difference, but it seems to me that the tip being buried shallowly could be beneficial by encouraging root growth. I haven't done any scientific experiments on this, but the few times
I've left leaves on the surface, it did seem like it took much longer
for roots to develop.

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As others have said, maybe there are multiple "good ways to do this", but burying the tip seems to work better for me.

From my observations, the roots are usually visible before any foliage,
but I've only had the good fortune to be able to experiment with a small
number of diff succulent plants, maybe 30. Among them, some have definitely had a lot more tries than others. Sedum morganianum, laying in a windowsill as we discuss. Looks like today would be a good day to find a spot for it.

This is a pic from a few months ago, right before they went to a pot. Graptoveria 'Opalina.'


These are the plants seen in the top center pot from this pic today, that one's a 1.5" pot:


Excellent thoughts to consider, Brandon, TY. I'm intrigued about comparing woody entities to these kinds of succulents, at all. I don't have anything to share in regard to air layering for woodies, never appealed to me to try, just straight cuttings & ground layering. The structure & growth of those vs. succulents seems to diff to compare to me.

It's hard to compare anecdotes well if most of one person's tries have been one way and most of the other person's have been the opposite. I've realized during this convo that I haven't really given buried tip method enough tries to have developed strong general feelings. Just got super excited when laying on surface started producing nearly 100% results & didn't go back to trying the other.

Using leaves from a same plant, put into the same pot, would probably be the best way to compare. Some buried at tip, some laying flat. That would make sure so many variables are equal... temp, air movement, humidity, amount of light, how/when water was applied, soil types/textures/PH...

It would be fun to have more info that one could use to manipulate results even more specifically. I'd rather learn something new than insist something is etched in stone! And there may be an explanation of why some of these tries fail, that has nothing to do with whether or not the tip is buried. Maybe as simple as type of plant, maybe generalizations aren't so worthwhile. I'm interested in entertaining any theories. If I didn't learn something new every day, often in opposition to what I
thought I knew the day before, I'd lose interest in plants & move
onto something else. Closing the door to new ideas is something I try
to never do.