Wintering young Lithops

The wintering of young lithops is a topic on which I often found information on the Internet that one-year-old lithops seedlings should be treated in the same way as adult plants during the winter. This is not true !

Wintering lithops seedlings is drastically different from adult plants. Although at first glance, our miniatures already remind us a lot of our parents, they need to be paid far more attention.

Basic thing we need to know: during the first year of life there is no rest for them. It is quite normal for them to "change clothes" several times during the first year. In the attached photo, you can see my Lithops seedlings, which are about 9 months old, and which are being changed for the second time.

Since they still do not have a sense of the cycle of the seasons during the first winter, you should pay attention to the following things:

• Water them continuously whenever we estimate that the substrate has dried.
• Each pot is a world unto itself, do not water them all at once by inertia, but carefully observe and conclude who needs it at a given moment.
• Reduce watering during shelling but do not stop.
• The minimum temperature should not fall below 15 C
• Give them as much light as possible, preferably add artificial light so that they do not lengthen due to the short day and low light.
•  Ventilate as much as possible, and if you have it on hand - turn on a smaller fan from time to time, for a couple of hours - it will be OK every few days. Due to too much humidity in the air during the winter, fungi are the number 1 danger for our seedlings.
• Do not feed lithops unless they are sown in a completely mineral substrate.

And so, with a little knowledge and luck, your lithops seedlings will welcome spring: large, healthy and ready for transplanting, and you can treat them as adult plants next winter.

If you want to know more about growing and caring for Lithops, read the following article.

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