Spider Plant Care: How To Grow Chlorophytum Comosum

What's up guys? Today we're going to talk about this houseplant, the spider plant, also known as Chlorophytum commosum, which if you ask me, sounds like you have a disease. You're infected with Chlorophytum commosum. I'm infected with love of the spider plant. So today we're going to talk about how do we care for this plant. It's one of the easiest to care for houseplants, one of the most popular houseplants. So we're going to talk about light requirements, water, soil, fertilizer, pruning, propagation, because propagating these is a little different than you would propagate a normal houseplant. So stay tuned. Let's go ahead and talk about where to put this in your home. As you can see, we've got bright indirect light on the spider plant right now. And so I've got my window over here. I've got my spider plant right here. That's what they like. They really want bright indirect light, which means six to eight feet away from ideally a south facing window. And what you're going to want to do if you want to create a lot of the babies, the spider plant pups, as they call them, for propagation, you can increase that amount of light. So if you go up to about 12 hours of light per day, they're going to increase their production of the spider plant pups. So that's a little propagation tip, although we will get into propagation in just a second. Okay, watering. When it comes to watering the spider plant, what's interesting is it has these long tuber-like roots that are pretty adept at holding water. However, because the spider plant likes to be a little root bound in a small pot and those roots can take up quite a bit of space, you might run into issues when you try to water it. Because not only if you top water will the water just kind of splash off of the plant, but also the roots take up so much space in the pot, the water might just drain straight through before the roots can actually take in water. So how do you solve this? Well, we're going to go ahead and show you that right now. So what I've done is I have placed it in a little bowl, just a standard bowl. And this is kind of contrary to how you would water most houseplants. Most houseplants you do not want to let water sit for a little bit. But for a root bound, which is again, what spider plants like, houseplant like the spider plant, you're going to want to try to get right down at that soil zone. Try not to bounce too much off of the leaves because the way that these grow, it can just throw water off the plant really easily. Come in here and just water until it fully runs through. But you kind of want to let it sit. See how quickly the water drained through? I mean, this water just poured through like it was nothing. So we're going to go ahead and repot this to a slightly larger pot. But at the same time, you're still going to run into this problem no matter what. So what I would do is I would let it sit for a little bit, just a little bit, not too long in a little bowl like this to make sure that those roots get the water that they need. And you would do this, you know, as needed, kind of the same way you would water most houseplants once that soil is dry to about one, two inches or so. When it comes to repotting your spider plant, unlike most plants, you're going to want to move up about two inches instead of one inch. Usually recommend one inch, but spider plants get root bound relatively quickly so you can give them a little more space than you would normally. And let's talk about the soil for a second. So I've got a standard potting soil here. You can use an African violet mix if you want. This is a mixture of perlite, peat moss and compost. Although you can just buy a standard potting mix as well. You'll do just fine. And then what we'll do is we're going to come through. We'll have to pop off these little guards here and gently we'll take it out. We've moistened the soil a little bit so it'll slide out nice and easy. And we're just going to place it in the new pot. We've got three separate spider plants here. They like to be a little clumped up and you can see they like being root bound. And you can see these roots are very tuberous, very thickly developed roots. Well, if we want, we can break up this root tissue just a bit so that they don't get root bound in their new pot. They'll think, like if you were to just leave them like this, they would kind of think that they were still in that old pot and they would follow the same growth pattern. I think, I believe one term for this is root memory. So if you break that up a little bit, you're going to be in a better spot. We'll do that right there. And now we're going to fill around the sides and then we'll give it another deep water and we're good to go. Now when it comes to fertilizing your spider plant, they don't need too much food. You can give them a half strength solution maybe once or twice a month, especially during the growing season. And you know, that's pretty much all they need. They're, they're healthy on their own. They don't need a whole lot of food unlike, you know, some other houseplants that we might talk about. So we're almost done repotting here. We're going to give this a quick drink and then we'll talk about some pruning because this isn't looking that beautiful if you ask me. Whenever you kind of repot and buy something from a store that's relatively cheap, sometimes you've got to clean it up a little bit. So let's water this in real quick and we'll go to the pruning. Okay, let's see if we can beautify this a little bit. So anytime you're transplanting from a store-bought plant, you're going to have kind of a crappy appearance sometimes and you're going to fix that, right? And so for spider plants, the easiest way to prune is just to cut directly at the soil surface for any leaf that you do not want on the plant anymore. So what I do is I look around. Look, you've got a sort of a damaged leaf right here. Really not going to do anything more for the plant. So I'll go ahead and snip that off and then we just go around. There's another one right here. You can see this little crease kind of damaged in transportation or you know, something happened to it that we don't want to leave on the plant. Any diseased leaves or damaged leaves, not going to do anything for the plant anyways on top of not looking that good. So I like to take them off. Any of these that might be a bit too long, I will also take off. A little droopy. You know, this is, this plant's going to grow. We don't need to worry about pruning too much. This plant's going to grow just fine. And I'm just going to go ahead and finish pruning. We'll speed this up a little bit and then we can talk about some diseases, some pests and some other problems that you might run into as well as how to propagate this unique and beautiful houseplant. Now you might be saying, Oh my God, you took way too much off of this plant. And I did give it a nice little haircut, but it will all grow back just fine. It will look beautiful. It will bush out again. So forgive this appearance. It will come back. Do not be afraid to prune it. But let's talk about how to propagate. What if you want more spider plants? Well, what happens with this plant is during the summer when it starts to flower, it's going to throw out spider plant babies or people will call them pups. And what you can do is it'll come out on a stem, the flower, and then the baby will come right out of that flower. And what you can do is you can either just clip the stem and plant that in water or in soil, or you can take a separate pot and put the baby in that pot while it's still attached to the parent and then cut it off once it roots. So those are two different ways that you can propagate the spider plants. Um, now let's talk about some growing problems. Really it's a easy to care for plant. As long as you give it the right conditions, all the stuff we already talked about in the video, you're going to be in a good spot. However, there are a couple of things that you might run into. Now the most notable thing is going to be browning tips. So you can see here we've got a couple of little brown tips here. Most of the time that's either too much fertilizer or for the spider plant, it's a lack of humidity. This is a plant that wants a lot of humidity. So what you may want to do is grab a plant mister, and I'll leave a link in the description down below for one that I personally like and mist it every now and then if you're seeing those brown tips. Another thing you might run into is if, if you have cats, cats for some reason really like to eat spider plant leaves. And I've discovered that the reason is because they're kind of a hallucinogenic similar to how a cat treats catnip. So what I would recommend if you have a cat and I don't have a cat anymore, but when I did, I kept it very high away from any area where a cat could reach because otherwise there's going to claw away at all of it. They'll do your pruning for you, which is kind of nice, but they will just shred a spider plant a bit. So if you do have a feline, keep the spider plant out of reach unless you want your cats to be high all the time. I don't know. It's up to you. Okay, before we go, got my little spider plant next to me. Let's talk about some questions that I often get about the spider plant. So these came from Instagram, the podcast, the YouTube channel, everywhere. And I'm just going to read off some most common questions and I'll read off some of my answers as well. So the first question, if you're propagating, how large should I let my spider plant babies get before I transplant them into the soil? So basically the answer here is as soon as they've begun to develop roots, your spider plant babies, you can put them in the soil. Eventually those roots will thicken up. They will become water storage machines like we saw when I pulled those roots out for you. And then you won't really need to worry about root development at all. So general answer here is as soon as your spider plant babies develop roots, you can put them in the soil. Next, talking about those cats, those felines. My cat chewed off almost all the leaves of my spider plant. What should I do? So if you seriously damage your spider plant, you might even say that I seriously damaged it with how much I pruned. It'll come back. It just will take some time. What I would do is any of the leaves that your cat just decimated, cut them off at the soil surface. They're not really going to do too much for you and just be patient. It will come back. Okay. Next one. My spider plant is feeling sticky. What is happening? So if the plant starts to feel sticky, could be a sign that the plant is either infested with aphids or scale insects. Both of these are like sap sucking insects that secrete a sticky like substance. So scan your plant, look at the undersides, look at above, look where the leaves come out from each other because those are little crevices where bugs like to be. And just scan your plant for insects, because most likely you're going to be dealing with one of those two problems. Okay. My spider plant has lost its variegation. Is this normal? Okay. So here's what's happening. Variegation, if you don't know what it means is the difference in color in these leaves, the striped sort of appearance. So when your spider plant doesn't get enough sun, it's going to start losing its variegation. So houseplants in general or plants in general, the variegation will either go away or strengthen depending on how much light that plant is getting. With spider plants, typically the less light it gets, the less variegation there will be. So that's going to be the answer to that one. Two more for you. The leaves of my spider plant are soft and transparent. Is it going to survive? I think if you've followed my channel long enough to know the answer to this already, which is you're going to be dealing with some root rot issues or some overwatering issues. If you have these soft, squishy leaves, you're probably overwatering your spider plant. So just dial it back. Maybe repot with some fresh soil, cut out some of those dead roots and you're going to be in a good spot. Finally, can I use tap water to water my spider plant? Well, some varieties of spider plants are pretty sensitive to the chlorine that's found in most tap water. What you can do is you can just leave your tap water out for 24 to 48 hours. The chlorine will off gas and you'll be in a good spot there. You can also throw it through something like a Brita filter if you want to just more quickly remove that as well as some other particles in hard water. I know here where I live, I get a lot of hard water. So that's pretty much that when it comes to the spider plant. I don't have too many other questions here. If you do have any, drop them down in the comments down below. And I just, right before I go, I do want to recommend a few different varieties of spider plants. So there aren't too many. Unlike most houseplants, there's not too many. You've got the standard chlorophytum chemosum. Then you've got chlorophytum chemosum variegatum, which is this one, the variegated variety. The normal spider plant is just one single color. Then you've got reverse variegatum where the white is on the outsides instead of the inside. So on this plant you can see you've got white variegation on the inside of the leaves. In the other, the reverse variegatum, white's on the outside and green is on the inside. So pretty much the same plant, just switch of the colors. And then finally you've got zebra, which is kind of interesting. Zebra kind of looks like reverse variegatum except for the sides are a little bit more yellowish. And then finally, finally, you've got that Hawaiian spider plant. It's kind of a combination of all the different types. It starts out variegated, but then the leaves will turn green as the plant matures. And it's not really due to light. It's just the way that the plant is. So thank you so much for watching guys. That's it for the humble spider plant. If you have any other tips, suggestions, questions, leave them in the comments down below. I do have a Patreon now, so if you want to support, I'll send you some sweet Epic Gardening stickers. You can see them on my laptop right there. There we go. Um, and until next time guys, good luck in the garden, keep growing, get a spider plant in your house and I'll see you on the next video.