Echeveria getting etiolated?

[forests-of-fire]

Hey!

I have 2 echeverias in a (I think) 6" pot and the base of the plants were about 1/2" below the rim of the pot. I noticed this morning they have some space between layers of leaves (about .5-1cm), so I took them out and put more soil in so that the base of the plants are now level with the top. When I took them out, I found a couple pale yellow, slightly squishy leaves underneath the plants.

I'm assuming the plants were starting to get etiolated. So my question is: will making them level with the rim of the pot stop the etiolation? I know the stems can't lose the extra length, since it's not like you can un-grow something. But what should I expect?

(Moving them to another window is pretty much impossible, since the other window in the first floor of our apartment gets less light than the kitchen window does. And the bedroom windows upstairs have the same set-up -- bright morning sunlight, dimmer afternoon sun.)

I've also put more soil in my lithrops and the baby plants I have (unknown species -- looks like it may be a sedum, but that's taking the world's biggest wild guess) to make them level with the rims of their respective pots. The lithrops weren't even 1/2" deep into its pot, but the babies were about half way down in the little 2" pot they were in at the nursery. I didn't break up the dirt around the baby plants' roots, though, because I didn't want to accidentally damage the roots.

[iann]

Pale yellow squishy leaves sounds like overwatering. Underwatering will also kill off the bottom leaves but they would go more brown/grey and crispy.

Etiolation is not caused by losing the lower leaves. It is entirely due to the growth at the top of the plant. You can have an etiolated plant with leaves right down to soil level. An etiolated plant will have the leaves spaced too far apart. In the case of an Echeveria, the leaves should be packed more or less tightly together depending on the species. Any form of upright growth is likely to mean etiolation. Every Echeveria I can think of forms a more or less flat rosette of leaves, certainly wider than tall, possibly a mound of tight rosettes for some species.

Any Echeveria indoors is likely to be somewhat etiolated, although you can grow them fairly well in a sunny window.

[forests-of-fire]

I know what etiolation is. I said that there's space between the layers of leaves, between .5cm and 1cm. The lowest layers of leaves are on the soil. The 2 yellow, squishy leaves weren't attached to the plants IIRC, so I'm fairly certain they're not related to the etiolation. I threw that in because I wasn't 100% sure if it could be related to the etiolation or not -- I thought they might have fallen off because they weren't getting enough sun and were starting to decompose.

I have them in my sunniest window and, hopefully, between that and moving them to the top of the soil, they won't get any more etiolated. It's good to know that indoor echies are likely to get etiolated and (I'm assuming) it's not necessarily a death sentence for the plant.

[iann]

If they get too bad, (most) Echeverias can easily be chopped and re-rooted. Slightly scary with a single rosette on a rare cultivar, but usually you'll have a good clump to go at.

[forests-of-fire]

Well, I doubt these are rare ones, since I got them for $5 at Lowe's. But, yeah, I suppose worse comes to worse, I can re-root them. Hopefully it won't come to that, though, since I caught the etiolation in what I think is the early stages. The extra stem between the levels is only 1cm at max, so it actually took me few minutes of staring and mentally measuring before I went "... yeah, that's definitely etiolation. Time to put more soil in." -