I love my plants like my own children, well, if I had any. My houseplants and my outdoor garden, all my plantlings are precious to me. But it's extra special when my baby plants have babies of their own. My tomatoes are blooming and fruiting outside and, inside, my spider plant has been working on some new additions as well.
Spider plants are strange in the way they propagate. They have two very different ways of doing it. The first way is standard plant procedure: make flowers, plant sex, make seeds and hope for the best (statistically favourable hope, of course). The second way they do it is quite a bit more interesting.
Spider plants grow little plant tendrils that extend out from the base of the original plant, and, on these tendrils are soon to be new little copies of the main plant. Essentially the plant is sending out little copies of itself beyond it's root system in order to find more soil and grow. Smart. Plant smart! Well, smart if it were, in this day and age, kept in a garden surrounded by soil. Now-a-days those tendrils will be lucky to find moist air they can start to 'grow' in. Enter houseplant owner!
I had two of these tendrils growing off my spider plant earlier this year. They grew two sets of babies each before I finally gave in and decided to deal with them. (Normally I cut off these tendrils so that my plant will focus on growing itself, instead of babies. But I got preoccupied so I had let them be.)
My little plant babies however had spent a lot of time growing and there were in fact two separate plantlings on each of the two tendrils. I thought about cutting them apart but decided perhaps they would break apart of their own accord if I gave them a little force to contend with. Turns out this was the right choice as the both easily separated with a little persuasion. Then it was into a little jar with some water to propagate some roots.
It really should have only taken 2 weeks, but I left my little rootlings in that jar for about a month. Their root systems got all big and ready to plant.
Now it was just a case of finding some lovely (and cheap) pots from IKEA, filling the bottom with rocks (to keep excess water out of the soil) and filling the rest with potting soil. One day I'll have a back yard to do this, but till then, the kitchen sink can be half garden centre as well.
My little babies seem pretty pleased. Now to find new homes for them =) <3 (And wait for more! Haha.)
-Andrea
The Half-Assed Hobbyist