Now that the weather is warming up, it's the perfect season for repotting! How is your own succulent repotting going? Wait, are you overwhelmed by how many plants you have to tackle? Well then, you're in luck—today, I'm sharing my "ultra-fast repotting method" that's become the norm at my home. I hope you'll find it helpful!

By the way, I think this technique is pretty much unique to succulents. The only other plant you might pull this off with is the sweet potato (haha).

The Standard Way to Repot

Whether it's succulents or other plants, the basic repotting steps are pretty much as follows. Even on NHK's gardening shows, professionals always demonstrate this classic method. Of course, this is a tried-and-true approach you should absolutely master.

1. Gently remove the plant from its pot
2. Depending on the species, either leave the root ball intact or break it up a bit
3. Add drainage stones to the bottom of the new pot
4. Add and level some soil
5. Place the plant
6. Fill in the gaps around it with soil
7. Tap the sides as you go and use a soil stick or chopstick to ensure no gaps remain
8. Add decorative gravel if needed

Once you're used to it, you can get it done in about five minutes.

Ultra-Fast Repotting Technique

Now, here’s the extreme version!

1. Yank or cut the plant out of its pot
2. Use the new pot to scoop soil until it’s full
3. Add decorative gravel if you want
4. Stick the plant in

That’s it. If you’re quick, you can be done in as little as five seconds!

Key Points and Tips

To sum up—it works by letting go of preserving the root ball and skipping the most time-consuming part: filling soil into the narrow gaps around the plant. Instead of painstakingly adding soil little by little, you just dump it all in at once and stick the plant in. No need for a scoop—you can just use the pot itself to scoop and pack in the soil. Goodbye, garden scoop!

But there are a few important points to keep in mind.

Not Recommended for Precious or Rare Plants

As you can probably tell, this method is rougher on the plant—so the risk of infection, poor root establishment, or slowed growth is higher than if you do it the traditional way. So, I wouldn't recommend it for irreplaceable or rare specimens.

Try to Leave as Much Root as Possible

Since the goal here is simply to "stick the plant in the soil at the end" (not to make a cutting), it’s best to leave as much of the roots as you can, as long as they don’t get in the way of replanting. Even a little root left behind will help the plant start regrowing faster, so recovery happens more quickly.

Is This Method Really Okay?

I get it—at first, I thought, "If I cut the hard-earned roots, won’t the plant stop growing?" so I tried to keep the root ball as intact as possible.

But really—the PUKUBOOK way is to just give things a try rather than overthink them. Here are some plants I repotted both ways as an experiment. True, the plants with their root balls preserved look like they're growing bigger, but the key point is: the trimmed-root plants are also healthy and growing well. If you can save this much work for such a small difference, wouldn't you say it's totally worth it?

"In the end, the plants with the root ball preserved are bigger, aren’t they!" If you only look at these results, that’s true. But the sample size is still small, so I can't draw a definite conclusion yet (plus, the original plant sizes were a bit different, and I ended up photographing pots that made the difference look larger). I'll keep sharing more examples as I go along.

The Pros Do It Too!

You might be thinking, "Only hobbyists would come up with a method like this!"—but hold on! Professionals use similar techniques, too.

For example, Naoyuki Hanakane has a video called "Echeveria Repotting" you should check out )), where he boldly breaks up and reduces the root ball size.

And the folks at Kashiwaya Shoten, in this short reel about propagating Shichifukuminis by cuttings, show how pros who work in bulk simply plop seedlings into pots filled with soil—an ultra-fast technique that only makes sense when you need to do a lot at once. While it's technically propagation, not repotting, I’ve borrowed some steps and ideas from this style.

How Can Succulents Handle This?

Let’s get into a little plant science: roots do two main things—they support the plant and absorb water. Succulents evolved in dry climates where it barely rains for most of the year. During these long dry spells, the roots' "water-absorbing" function is basically useless! So succulents actually actively let their roots die back during the dry season. While dead roots still help hold the plant steady, they don’t consume energy, helping the plant go dormant. Then, when the rainy season comes, succulents will regrow new roots at an incredible pace to get ready for growth again.

That’s why even if you chop off most of the root ball during repotting, it doesn't slow growth as much as you'd think. This is a unique adaptation of succulents.

Summary

"How to repot" is a classic gardening topic, and I never wrote about it on PUKUBOOK because, honestly, it's covered everywhere and everyone pretty much gets it ((of course, I do realize that beginners are reading, so it’s good to have clear, gentle guides available, but it’s always slipped down my priority list)).

But what I really want to know are those more extreme methods that you’ll never find in a book. What do the pros actually do? Aren't there faster, more efficient ways? Sure, being careful is good, but sometimes I crave contrarian, boundary-breaking ideas. That’s why I decided to share these approaches.

Hope you’ll give it a try (haha)!