How to Grow and Care for Hens and Chicks (House Leek)

Hens and Chicks Care

Here are the main care requirements, which are minimal, for growing hens and chicks.

• Place the plant in bright light or full sun unless you live in a very hot, dry climate, where it should be in light shade.
• Use well-draining, gravely soil outdoors or a succulent or cactus mix indoors.
• Avoid smothering the plant with too much water and fertilizer. Check the soil for dryness first before watering.

Light

Grow your hens and chicks plants in full sun (at least six hours daily), which will lead to optimal foliage coloration and plentiful offsets. That being said, the plants can also grow in partial shade, especially if they are being cared for in an especially hot, dry climate.

Soil

Hens and chicks plants are especially nonchalant about their soil but will grow best in a sandy or gravel mix. The main soil requirement for the plant is that it be well-draining. If your soil is heavy and doesn’t drain well, work some gravel, pumice, perlite, or sand into the mixture to increase the aeration and drainage. These plants prefer neutral soil.

If you’re growing your plants in a container, the best potting medium is a mix formulated for succulents and cacti.

Water

Hens and chicks are drought-tolerant perennials that can withstand weeks without watering. Give newly transplanted plants sufficient water to help them get established, but once they are, be careful not to overwater them. On average, a plant can use one cup every two weeks or sooner in hot weather conditions. Check the soil and make sure it is dry before watering.

Temperature and Humidity

Hens and chicks can be successfully grown in various temperatures but prefer an average climate between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit. If temperatures drop too low, they will not necessarily die off but will stop growing and go into a semi-dormant state. Additionally, hens and chicks tolerate various humidity levels and are popular in dry climates.

Fertilizer

This ground cover can thrive in poor soils. They appreciate a slow-release fertilizer designed for succulents or cacti that’s low in nitrogen and includes beneficial soil microbes. Be careful not to over-fertilize.

Types of Hens and Chicks

You may find this plant sold in two species variations: Sempervivum tectorum var. arvernense, which features leaves that are covered with velvet-like hairs, and Sempervivum tectorum var. tectorum, with smooth leaves edged with hairs.

Commercially, there are several cultivars of S. tectorum offered, bred for different foliage colors and shapes:

• ‘Bernstein’ has copper and gold leaves.
• ‘Big Blue’ is an eye-catching version with bluish-green leaves.
• ‘Black’ is a stunning version of green leaves with purple tips.
• ‘Terracotta Baby’ is a variety with vibrant orangey-red foliage.
• ‘Claudia’ has large rosettes with bright red leaves.
• ‘Herringer Rose’ has 5-inch rosettes with red leaves tinged with brown.
• ‘Launcelot’ has brownish-red leaves.
• ‘Morgenrote’ is a gorgeous cultivar featuring plumb-red leaves edged with green.
• ‘Pelora’ is an unusual mutant variety with bright green, bullet-shaped leaves.

Other species of this genus are also sold, usually as houseplants. They may be lumped together as Sempervivum with no species designation.

Propagating Hens and Chicks

Hens and chicks can spread up to three feet when forming a colony with its lateral rooting system. To propagate a hens and chicks plant, split the offsets (the “chicks”) from the parent plant (the “hen”), preserving the roots of each, if possible. Here’s how:

1. Using a small trowel, transplant the offsets into well-drained soil, creating a shallow hole to spread out the roots.
2. Replace the soil with the plant’s crown and gently compact it around the roots.
3. You can give the offset a light watering, but let the new plant dry out between waterings. Under ideal conditions, plants will spread on their own.

How to Grow Hens and Chicks From Seed

In addition to propagating by digging up the offset chicks, you can grow hens and chicks from the seeds produced from a mature plant’s flowers. However, seeds from hybrid plants may not produce plants that are true to the parents. If you’d like to try propagating from seed, here’s how:

1. Collect the seeds from the pods left behind after the flowers fade, and sprinkle them on top of pots filled with cactussucculent potting mix.
2. Lightly moisten the mix and place the pot in a bright location; the seeds should sprout within three weeks.
3. At that point, you can add some fine gravel and mulch.

Potting and Repotting Hens and Chicks

Hens and chicks are good potted or container garden plants outdoors and indoors. This plant does well in a shallow, well-drained container filled with a cactussucculent potting mix. Use a clay pot, which will wick moisture to prevent overwatering.

Hens and chicks can be grown alone as a small cluster colony or in a large container as one plant in a mixed group of succulents or a miniature rock garden.

Overwintering

Hens and chicks survive the winter and don’t require winter cold protection. However, these plants do not favor wet winter conditions, so clean away ground debris to reduce moisture from collecting or introducing rot.

Outdoor potted plants are less protected from temperature extremes in cold winter zones, so place them in a sheltered location or bring them indoors for the winter.

Common Pests & Plant Diseases

Hens and chicks grown indoors, in a greenhouse, or in overly moist conditions tend to have the biggest issue with pests, mostly mealybugs and aphids. If you notice signs of an infestation, try to remove the bugs using a cotton swap or cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol. You can also treat the plants with neem oil or insecticidal soap.

Moist conditions or poor drainage can encourage a variety of fungal leaf spots or root rot. The best way to forestall these issues is to keep these plants dry.

How to Get Hens and Chicks to Bloom

What do Hens and Chick’s Flowers Look and Smell Like?

Up close, the plant’s flower is tiny and delicate, not the showiest of blooms, nor is there an indication of scent. When these rare flowers appear, they will sit on the tip of a vertically elongated stalk. The flowers will have six to even 12 petals with a daisy-like appearance. The flower colors range from pinkish to orange, yellow, or white.

How to Encourage More Blooms

These plants are grown for their foliage and geometric growth habit, so flowering is not necessarily desirable, nor should it always be encouraged. These plants usually propagate vegetatively, not through seeds, so flowering can even be a sign of poor conditions. A hens and chicks plant will flower if stressed by overcrowding, extreme light, or temperature shifts.

In addition, it can take at least a couple of years before this plant sends up a distress bloom. But if you want the plant to flower (for example, if you’re going to experiment with seed propagation), you can deliberately stress it by shading it.

Caring for Hens and Chicks After It Blooms

A plant, such as hens and chicks, that dies after it flowers is called a monocarpic succulent. Flowering doesn’t always occur, which is entirely normal. A mature plant’s central rosette (the hen) will die after it flowers. You can either remove the stalk or leave it in place so it can collapse into the colony and become compost for the rest of the plant. Offset chicks will continue the colony.

If you want to remove the stalk after the blooms fade, snip it off, but be careful not to injure the nearby offsets. An established colony will live for decades with this constant replacement of rosettes, with or without blooms.

Common Problems With Hens and Chicks

In ideal conditions, hens and chicks are typically carefree plants. When problems occur, the plant is often getting too much water.

Plant Turns Mushy

When the leaves turn soft and wilt, it is usually because overly wet conditions are causing the plant to rot. The roots may already rot, so the best solution is to dig up the plant, split off any of the “chick” rosettes still intact, and discard the bad sections. If this is a regular occurrence, it indicates your soil needs improved drainage by amending it with sand or gravel.

Rosettes Die Back

It is natural for a “hen” rosette to die back after producing flowers and setting seeds. Paradoxically, this plant is more likely to flower and die if it gets too much water or fertilizer.