A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Spider Babies

My Spider plant is doing very well. A few months back I took two babies at different times(with fleshy roots as recommended). They did great and spread out to be about the size of the palm of an average womans hand...then...they started to die I made sure I didn't water too much and kept them on a table in the east window which provides good,bright,filtered light. Now the "Mommy" is full again and I read the weight from the babies can be stressful to her. What to do? I'm afraid to cut any more babies off when I don't know the proper way to care for them until they become grown and start having their own babies. What must I do

OLA.

the odd thing is that they grew first. it would make more sense if they never grew then started to die..then you could look at the soil conditions. BUT...since they rooted..took to the transplant..then started withering...hummm...could be deeper.

when i take babies..(cut the imbilical cord) i always root in water first. even if they are showing wee roots. this way i know they will be ready to uptake water. the for spider plants..i give them the best drainage i can find. like a soiless mix. not too big of a container for a while either..they are newly hatched after all. any soil medium with alot of peat i try to avoid...it stays much too damp for my liking. and another huge thing is the light..they LOVE it. minium 6 hour i think is the going rate.

so..sounds as though you are on the right track...if i were you..i would just try it again. you aint got nothing to lose..and the mama will thank you! it could have been something silly like cat pee..or beer.(not that that has ever happened to me )

good luck doctor..

you could also try planting the babies while they are still attached to the mother. they usually grow a lot faster.

PS...let the babies get fairly large, to the size of a small plant.

Crazy as it may be..spider plants are the easiest thing for me to grow! They just go crazy! The only problem that I have with them is the spider mites just love them...and I immediatly know when the stop growing...or turning yellow that I need to treat the mites...then they just take right back off. I just got through transplanting 10 pots of babies to give away! Just something you might check...

Hello, i'm new here and i have a spider plant. It is my favorite plant. i use to add fertilizer to my plants but noticed the water was black. too much fertilizer i guess. So now i run pleanty of water through the spider plant and make sure the water is "clean". I hang it up in a west window after i water it so it gets pleanty of sun after i water it. But i should move it out of the sun now that the plant is alittle dryer. I am really hopeing it will have new spider plants on it because i would love to have many spider plants in my apartment. It's too early to tell but i think my spider plant might be in the process of haveing spliderlings in the future. Robert SpiderPlantMan

Hi Syl!
What i always did when i wanted a spider plant from work, is i would go in, choose ANY hanging baby, *provided it was atleast the size of a quarter* roots or not, and just let it sit on soil with about a foot of stem from the mother plant on it. I think the stem helps give it nutrients or something. But ya, i donno when it grows roots, or if it even does, cuz i never checked >.< But its growin like a weed!

Nako,

I do something similar when I root my spiderlings, except I have a paperclip bent into a "U" shape that I place *lightly* over the umbilical cord (i.e. stem) to hold the baby onto the pot of soil. I had to start doing this because my spider plant has a tendency to send out 4 foot shoots so often I had to bend the shoot around to a pot next to the mother.

applescruff