Variegated Spider Plant
Variegated Spider Plant
(Chlorophytum comosum ‘variegatum’)
Spider plants are extremely easy plants to take care of, and are quite forgiving after being neglected. These two main factors make them perfect for a first time plant parent.
Light:
Partial or filtered sunlight seems to work best. Direct sun will quickly burn and discolor these plants. They thrive in our backyard which gets a few hours of direct light in the morning. Throughout the day as the sun shines through holes in the trees they get hit with intermittent bursts of light.
Location:
Indoor/Outdoor frost to frost. We move our spider plants outside just after what we expect to be the last frost. Then back and forth as mother nature goes through her mood swings here in New Jersey, zone 7a. As the nights begin dipping down into the low 40s we move them back inside.
Soil:
Any common potting soil works well with these. We try to work a little compost cut with perlite into ours to provide some extra nutrients.
Propagation:
If you want to spread your love of house plants, Spider Plants are a great way to do get started. When the conditions are right you will have more spider plant babies than you have friends to give them to. Some of our mother plants are putting out 50+ babies at a time. With a large amount like this you can be choosy with which ones you invest your time into.
Babies will come from the tiny white flowers that will spring from the semi rigid yellow arms that will shoot out of your mother plant. The flowers are so short lived that you may not even notice them before your new spider grandbabies appear.
We pick the strongest and healthiest specimens from multiple mothers. Mainly we are looking for size, and root growth. At the base of each new plant you should see some small whitish protrusions, these are your new roots. The larger the roots the quicker your new baby should grow. Plant the babies directly into a small pot, or let the base sit in some water(nutrient rich for maximum growth)
Another propagation technique that has proven successful for us is splitting. Not in the traditional sense of pulling a large plant apart. I guess that would work in theory but we have never tried it. We have taken a serrated bread knife and sawn a large plant right in 2. Neither half even seemed to flinch.
