As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to holiday decor, the more plants, the better. So I’m glad that this egg planter kills two birds with one stone, because while it would be a cute Easter centerpiece, it can also help you propagate your succulents, and save them from their lanky winter state.

In case you’re wondering what someone who doesn’t eat eggs is doing with a ceramic egg crate, well, I bought it back when I did eat eggs. (I actually haven’t eaten eggs other than in baked goods since I was a little kid, because I don’t like them, and now I’m vegan.) The other day I found it in a drawer, and got started thinking about how I could use it in ways other than intended. Of course my brain decided plants needed to be involved!

Although I used plastic Easter eggs for this, you could also definitely use real plain or decorated eggshells that you’ve carefully broken in half and washed.

Since they have smaller roots than a lot of plants, succulents seemed like they would be a good choice, but there was a problem with some of the ones I had been overwintering. They looked like the one on the left:

When succulents get like this after a winter indoors, I always think that they’re trying to run away from home to find better light. And they kind of are. Indoor winter light isn’t really enough for them, so they’re stretching out to find more. Fortunately, they can be saved, and propagated at the same time!

The Easter bunny doesn’t bring me eggs, she brings me more plants 😉

 

Easter Centerpiece Egg Planter

Materials

Ceramic egg tray – The exact one I used is no longer available. This one and this one are the best matches I found.
Plastic Easter eggs – Or real eggs, carefully broken in half and washed clean.
Small succulents – Or stretched-out succulents you want to propagate.
Succulent soil

Tools

Plant shears (optional)

Steps

1. If you’re propagating your sun-starved succulents, use your plant shears to cut off the head of the succulent, plus an inch or so of stem. If it still looks too stretched-out, you can gently pull lower leaves off and trim it further. Save the leaves–you can propagate more plants from those, too! Leave the succulent head and any stray leaves to callous over for a few days before you put them in soil to develop roots. Don’t worry, if there isn’t time to do that before Easter, just stick the head on the dry soil, and remove it after Easter to callous over before putting it back. Keep watering the stem that you trimmed the head from, and hopefully it will grow a new plant, too.

You can see that this guy already had roots on the stem, called “aerial roots,” from not being watered properly. Oops!

2. If you’re using potted plants, remove the succulents from their pots, and brush off excess soil. Place the plants in half of a plastic egg, and place that in the egg crate. If you’re using succulents you’re propagating, place plants with a calloused-over stem on top of a plastic egg filled with succulent soil. Keep the soil moist until roots develop. 

3. After your succulents have developed roots, transplant them to a bigger pot. If you’re using already-rooted succulents, eventually you’ll want to move those back to a bigger pot, too.