Indoor Gardening and Houseplants: Hoping For The Best, 1 by jdee

jdee wrote:
I don't know what it is with me and spider plants. I just love them. I have the solid green one that my aunt gave me (the subject of this thread), and I have a varigated one, made up of babies, sent to me from a very generous fellow member (thanks Staci). This is the variety that has leaves with a green middle and white around the edges. I love both of them, and can hardly wait for them to really fill out and produce plantlets.

Now if that wasn't enough, DH and I were looking through a local plant nursery for purple salvia. Didn't find any, but guess what I did find. None other than a spider plant. This one, I'd never seen before. It's varigated, but the leaves are white in the middle, and green around the edges. The opposite of the one I already have. The poor thing was sitting on the ground to the side, as if forgotten. It was terribly root bound, and over crowded, it even had weeds in it. Shameful. I think the owner was really suprized that someone was actually buying it. lol... but it had babies, and blooms on it, and over all pretty heathy. I just couldn't leave it behind. It was like a lost kitten, begging to be taken home. lol

I got it home, and pulled the weeds out of the soil. some of them were even growing up through the middle of them plant. Then my plan was to cut off all the damaged, discolored, or old leaves. As I was pulling one up to be cut, it just pulled right out. I was surprised, because I didn't pull very hard at all. Then I got this wild idea...I went through the whole thing giving each leave a gentle tug. If it pulled out easily, I discarded it, if no, I left it. I then, repotted it into a new hanging basket (it was so root bound that it stood up by itself lol), and you wouldn't believe the difference. Here is a photo of my new baby. I sure wish I'd taken a before picture so you could see the difference, but I just did everything, figuring it out as I went along, not know the results would be so dramatic. So now I have three spider plants.....lol