How To Propagate And Repot Agave Pups
Agaves and other plants that produce clone offshoots or “pups” are very easy and rewarding to divide and transplant. You can make your gardening budget go farther with a little effort and patience by including them in your garden design, or if you’ve run out of room, they can even make great gifts!
We aren’t talking about propagating by cuttings, so you don’t have to use any rooting hormone and then have to worry about whether or not a cutting will “take” because you’re basically extracting an already whole plant, the “pup”, from the “mother” plant and transplanting it.
So long as you’re careful with the roots and then give it appropriate soil and water (not too much), your newly transplanted agave should establish itself just fine.
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Budget landscaping + design repetition
Repotting your agave pups is a great way to stretch your gardening budget since agaves and many other succulents are expensive relative to many other plants, so you can incorporate your free agave pups in your own landscape design.
Repetition is a core landscape design principal anyway. We generally don’t want to have just one of a particular plant except where you’re showcasing a large tree or specimen plant.
Repetition creates order to the eye, which humans find naturally pleasing.
Sometimes you just don’t need any more of a particular plant though, so agaves also make great gifts! One year I gave my co-workers at the landscape architectural firm where I was working pups of my Agave americana var. medio-picta 'Alba' in simple terra-cotta pots wrapped with a burlap bow along with Pete’s Coffee cards.
The grayish-green and creamy white variegated stripes made for a nice, “California green” holiday pot. (Many plants native to CA or that do well here in our mild, arid climate are gray-green rather than green-green).
SHOP THE LOOK (Six of my favorite Agaves!)
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(Click to get straight to the transplanting steps)
My Agave “investment” purchase
I decided to do a last-minute mini-planting-makeover in a small planting bed left of my home’s entry. My house was suddenly going to be on a holiday home tour to take the place of another, so I had to get ready fast.
The plantings on the left side of my front walk were overrun with tired, rangey tall plants, so I had them removed except for a volunteer palm tree and some smaller agaves I placed there years ago. (Which were not meant to be a permanent location, but here they are 8 years later!)
I knew I wanted a large, specimen agave in front of my arched window, so I planned for one of my favorites - Agave salmiana ‘Ferox’. Their large size and graceful, urn-shaped form make them a stand-out in any landscape. Ferox is Latin for ferocious, and this agave lives up to its name.
The only problem? December ‘tis not the season to be buying landscape plants, even from wholesale nurseries. My wholesaler only had it available in the variagated form, which I really didn’t want since I already have variegated Agave americana medio-picta ‘Alba’ in that bed.
So after searching around, the only place in the Bay Area that had one was at Cactus Jungle in Berkeley. It was actually Agave salmiana, minus the ‘Ferox’. However, I realized it’s actually the type planted at Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma, which was my original inspiration. I was told by Cactus Jungle that it has a broader leaf than the Ferox cultivar, which I consider to be more desirable anyway.
Stunning display of enormous Agave salmianas with Mexican Feathergrass repeated in rows at Cornerstone Gardens in Sonoma, CA
Being a retail nursery though, the price was quite a bit steeper than I would normally pay. Agaves are slow-growing plants that take a lot of time and effort to cultivate before they’re salable at a large size, so it came with a price tag of $185 for a 10 gallon container. After hemming and hawing, I decided to bite the bullet.
I always calculate the ROI (return on investment) of larger purchases. I ask myself, what’s the bigger picture beside this immediate price tag? Never-mind wanting one for years, (yes, certainly a factor) I know that with my design sensibility, this will not be a cookie-cutter landscape when all is said and done, designed and installed. Having a statement plant like this can enhance the value of my home, especially when highlighted properly with landscape lighting.
Good design should pay for itself and then some. Every time I do a design project, my goal, in addition to adding beauty and function, is to add value. When you’re considering doing a major project, whether its a landscape or interior, I believe you should consider the cost-benefit ratio; where to put your money to get the most bang for the buck. It shouldn’t be the only consideration by any means; some project elements are put in place just because they make you happy, and while that can’t be quantified the same way, it is certainly worth something.
Agave americana var. medio-picta 'Alba' with pups in front of a Canary Island palm. Source | Greenhouse Studio
Some might argue that by this logic, maybe it’s better to fund a project like a kitchen rather than a landscape. Perhaps, but by my estimation, plenty of people can envision themselves taking on a kitchen remodel and will do a decent job of it. After all, there are only so many ways you can configure a kitchen: appliance, cabinet, and counter configuration, surface/finish materials to choose from, and all of this is laid out in a flat, and usually rectangular, box.
But a good landscape? Too often it’s done poorly or is at best, mediocre. Unlike the kitchen, there are way too many variables for most to handle well; it’s a living system with weather, slope, drainage, sun exposure etc to deal with, never mind how you actually layout hardscape, vertical elements, and then select plantings.
So when you have a great landscape, I think it provides a “wow” factor that other remodeling may or may not, often for less money than many interior remodeling projects. Therefore, potentially, a better ROI.
So this is my long-winded way of saying that the agave can pay for itself, just not next season, as they are slow-growing and will take years to get to an impressive size.
However, this agave came with several pups which I’ll use a in other places in my landscape design. This offsets the cost of a few other plants I would otherwise have purchased from the wholesale nursery.
Agave salmiana “mother plant” is planted at upper left by the entry steps. Other locations for using the divided and transplanted agave pups are circled on the bottom half of plan.
After I realized I had these pups, I decided I will use them instead of other plants that are currently laid out in my planting plan for my home, seen above.
So what does this all have to do with agave transplanting?
The bottom line is good design should provide a return on your time and money invested. A specimen plant properly sited in the landscape can be an important contribution to a landscape design project.
Also, you can save money and heck, even make some money by starting your own little succulent side biz if you want by digging and dividing up your extra pups or by propagating other succulents (if nothing else, it can fund your succulent habit)!
Now we’ll finally get on to the transplanting:
Transplanting Agave Pups
Materials
- Thick gloves (I like goatskin for cactus spines, some prefer nitrile gloves)
- Clippers/pruners (these are quality pruners at a good value)
- Containers for potting transplanted pups
- Soil for repotting (Here's a good succulent mix )
- Tarp (optional)
My 10 gallon Agave salmiana (you can purchase one here) came with about 6-ish pups that were ready to be split off and a couple more that weren’t ready to leave their mother. (The main plant is called the “mother” plant and the offshoots are “pups”.)
My Agave salmiana “mother plant” at Cactus Jungle in Berkeley, CA with pups crowding the sides of the container.
STEP 1 - Extract Agave pups from the mother plant. Carefully.
To begin, I needed to be able to get access to the plant. Agaves didn’t survive life in the desert all this time by being soft and friendly to critters who like to chew soft and friendly plants, so heavy gloves are in order because those spines mean business.
I laid out a tarp to minimize mess and to catch the great succulent soil Cactus Jungle uses. It has lots of pumice and lava rock for aeration so water drains well and doesn’t keep the plant too wet, which agaves dislike.
I wanted to keep the large container if possible to reuse, so I tried gently laying it on its side hoping to shimmy it out, but it wouldn’t budge. My landscaper who was doing the planting bed told me from the get-go that I’d have to cut the container to get it out, and he was right:
Containerized mother plant: Clip the sides of the container from water hole to top on two opposite sides (use an old pair of shears instead of your sharp pruners if possible). Put on your gloves and pry the container apart and lift out the agave (this is best with two people when dealing with a large specimen).
In-ground mother plant: If separating a pup from a plant in the ground, use a trowel or small shovel to dig out the pup, taking care not to damage the mother plant (or yourself).
Normal agave pup on upper left, etiolated pups in middle and bottom right. You can still propagate the the etiolated pups.
Notice the “normal” looking pup on the top and also the two white, elongated ones in the images below. Those are etiolated pups (stretched and lacking green chlorophyll from lack of sunlight exposure) that have been growing under the soil trying to find sunlight, which is why they are so elongated.
Gently pull pup away from the plant. Clip roots if necessary, and clip the larger, thicker umbilical root that connects the pup to the main plant.
Agave salmiana pups. Note the arrow pointing to the thicker umbilical root that connected the pup to the mother plant, and the little bonus pup on the right.
STEP 2 - Transplant the pups into pots or plant in-ground
Now you’re ready to transplant. Proper drainage and aeration is crucial to agaves, so be sure to use a cacti/succulent mix or amend your own soil with a good amount** of pumice or lava rock soil amendment, or horticultural sand or gravel.
- This succulent mix from Amazon is pre-mixed for you.
I scooped up the extra soil from the container and re-used it in the pots. I normally wouldn’t advise doing this out of concern for spreading disease, but the pups came from that soil, so if the soil held disease pathogens, they would already likely be contaminated.
Planting in-ground
Do not plant in a recessed area where water will accumulate.
Dig a hole at least twice as wide as needed for the pup. (Most agaves have spreading, shallow roots, so width is more important than depth).
Place the pup in the hole, spread out the roots, and back-fill with a 1:1 mixture of a cacti-succulent soil mix and the ground soil.
Place the crown of the plant high and do not cover it with anything including mulch. This is to prevent crown-rot. It will sink a bit in time anyway.
My Agave salmiana mother plant in my front garden. Source | Greenhouse Studio
Planting in a container
Hold the agave pup over the center of the pot and fill with a cacti/succulent mix.
Keep the crown high, but firmly push down on surrounding soil to stabilize the plant. Add more soil as needed.
One of the Agave salmiana pups transplanted into a pot with cacti-succulent mix soil. Source | Greenhouse Studio
STEP 3 - Water-in newly transplanted pups
Watering
“Water-in” just enough to remove air pockets from the soil. Then leave it alone.
Water in-ground transplants less frequently. Not at all in winter, once a month in spring and fall, and every couple weeks in summer. Eventually it likely will not need any supplemental irrigation.
Only water containers when they dry out, allowing them to dry out between waterings.
Agave americana var. medio-picta 'Alba' with other drought-tolerant plants. Source | Greenhouse Studio
Have any etiolated pups? Don’t waste them! They can be planted too - they just need a little more patience. Now that they’ll have sun exposure, all new growth will be normal, so pot them up and wait and see!
Happy transplanting - divide to multiply and watch your garden grow! If you have any questions about repotting your agave pups, be sure to leave a comment below.
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