Taking care of succulents has become a widespread hobby among plant enthusiasts today because they look great in any garden or home and how comparatively easy they are to grow and take care of.
If you want to add a good succulent to your collection, the Haworthiopsis Fasciata(also known as Zebra Plant or Zebra Haworthia) would be a nice choice because it is actually a good houseplant that won’t require a lot of care and attention on your part. So, how do you care for a Haworthiopsis Fasciata?
The Haworthiopsis Fasciata, previously the Haworthia fasciata, is an easy plant to take care of. It primarily needs to be left under indirect sunlight and will only need to be watered once every two to three weeks or when the soil is already dry. You don’t even need to put a lot of effort into this plant to take care of it.
You will be delighted to know that you don’t need to be a plant expert to care for the Haworthiopsis Fasciata or the zebra plant properly. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t learn how to take care of it.
There are still some things that beginners should know more about this plant, especially if you want to make sure that it gets to enjoy a long life and that it grows up to be a suitable decorative succulent for your house or garden.
How Do You Propagate Haworthiopsis Fasciata?
The Haworthiopsis Fasciata is actually pretty easy to propagate in case you want to add more zebra plants to your garden or house or in case you are looking to make sure that your mother plant gets to live another life in its children after the original plant has already lived past its lifespan.
In most cases, propagating this type of plant should be quite similar to propagating other types or variants of succulents. There won’t be many differences as the zebra plant is quite an easy specimen to propagate.
So, if you want to propagate the plant, you can follow these steps:
- Take a cutting from the mother plant using clean and sharp scissors or garden shears to make sure that the cutting is removed as smoothly as possible. You can choose between a leaf or a stem so long as either of them is healthy enough. The zebra plant also produces offsets, which you can use to propagate the Haworthiopsis Fasciata.
- If you use cuttings instead of offsets, allow the freshly cut leaf or stem to heal its wound first by leaving it somewhere to dry for a few days. Allowing the wound to heal is vital before planting the new succulent. When the wound has already dried up and the leaf or stem is still in great shape, that is when you will know that it is ready to be planted to propagate a new plant.
- Plant the cuttings in their own individual pot. You can do this immediately if you use offsets, but you need to wait for their wounds to heal if you use cuttings as your preferred propagation method. If you are using offsets, you can cut them off of the mother plant without waiting for a long time for them to heal and dry up.
- Make sure that the soil in the pot is moist but not too wet. Do not overwater the plant because this could lead to molds, fungi, and other health problems. Only water it when the soil is about 70% dry, and make sure that you only water until the soil is moist. But when the cutting or offset has already grown into its own plant, follow the usual watering procedures for watering a Haworthiopsis fasciata.
How Often Do You Water A Haworthia?
Like any plant or organism on earth, the Haworthiopsis fasciata needs water to survive even though it is a succulent native to South Africa, which doesn’t have the same moisture and abundance of water that some other regions have.
Thriving in places that are hot, dry, and lacking in water was what made succulents such as the zebra plant capable of surviving without the need to drink a ton of water. However, this plant still needs to be watered from time to time.
So, how often do you water the Haworthiopsis fasciata?
First of all, like most succulents, you need to place the Haworthiopsis fasciata in a well-drained pot with drainage holes that are quite big so that you can allow the water from the soil to pass through them efficiently. You water the plant directly on the soil so that the zebra plant’s roots can easily access the water.
When you water the Haworthiopsis fasciata, ensure that you do so until the water starts draining from the soil through the drainage holes. As soon as that happens, immediately stop because that is when you will know that the soil is already moist enough. Do not overwater the soil because this can lead to many problems such as molds, fungi, and other illnesses.
It will take a while before the soil once again needs to be rewatered. In some cases, you need to wait until perhaps two to three weeks before you need to water the plant once again. Of course, the rule of thumb to follow is to ensure that the soil is completely dry before watering it again. So, if the soil dries out in about a week, you need to water it again without waiting for two to three weeks.
Whenever it’s summer, you may need to water the zebra plant more often than you would because of how the hot weather will easily evaporate the moisture out of the soil to dry it out. Again, the rule of thumb to follow is to ensure that the soil is completely dry before watering it again. And whenever it’s summer, make sure that you thoroughly water the Haworthiopsis fasciata soil without overwatering.
Also, it is important to know that you need to lessen the frequency of watering your Haworthiopsis fasciata as the temperatures grow colder and colder. During the winter, you may even have to wait for more than three weeks for the soil to completely dry out as cold weather won’t evaporate the moisture from the soil just as quickly as the summer heat does.
Does Haworthia Need Sunlight?
Like most succulents, the zebra plant desperately needs a lot of sunlight as it relies almost entirely on the sun for its energy. In that sense, you need to keep it exposed to sunlight as long as you can because of how the Haworthiopsis fasciata is a full-sun plant.
But the one thing you need to remember here is that the zebra plant doesn’t do well when exposed to direct sunlight, especially if you live in a particularly hot region. That’s why it is most often considered a houseplant that you should keep indoors but close enough to the windows so that it can get exposed to indirect sunlight all day long.
However, if you do live in a region that isn’t particularly warm, such as when you live up north, you may be able to keep the Haworthiopsis fasciata outdoors as long as the sun isn’t too harsh, the zebra plant can withstand moderate sunlight, but it should not be exposed to the heat of the summer sun even though, in some cases, it can still tolerate high heat levels. It is still better to keep it away from direct sunlight and store it indoors as a houseplant.
How Do You Get Haworthia To Flower?
One of the best features of the Haworthiopsis fasciata is that it is a flowering succulent that produces great-looking flowers that are nice to look at regardless of wherever you may be keeping the plant. However, if you are keeping it outdoors, zebra plants bundled together will produce an amazing sight, especially because they have white or pinkish flowers captivating to the senses.
For Haworthiopsis fasciata grown indoors, you can expect them to flower during the spring or the summer naturally. You don’t need to force them or induce them into flowering because this plant will flower or bloom naturally on its own, depending on the season or the time of the year.
However, for those keeping it indoors, you have to understand that you won’t get the full bloom of this plant because it doesn’t get the same sunlight that it would if you had kept it outdoors.
Meanwhile, if you keep the Haworthiopsis fasciata outdoors, you can expect it to bloom sometime during spring or summer as well. However, there are cases where an outdoor zebra plant will flower during the fall. A zebra plant grown outdoors can produce a full bloom and may even grow long stems whenever it is flowering.
So, for those intending to keep zebra plants for their flowers as decorative pieces for a garden, it might be best to keep them outdoors to get to bloom compared to when you keep the plants indoors fully.
But you have to make sure that the outdoor climate in your region is suitable for the Haworthiopsis fasciata, or else it might end up developing health problems if the climate is too cold or too hot for it.
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