How to Revive a Spider Plant (Part 5)

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Today, we are checking in with Lucy. This is part five of Lucy’s revival. Lucy is this lovely spider plant that you can see right here, and we have been reviving her for quite a while now. This was her second pot, which it was in the last video. She was repotted up to her second pot, and now this is going to be her third pot. Really exciting because it’s a really pretty pot. I like how the striping goes one way on that pot, and then she’s got her own striping going on.

As I mentioned in the last video, when you are reviving a plant, a lot of times it’s going to take a while for that plant to revive and to be able to be potted up more frequently. Once the plant is in a good state health-wise and it’s really growing well, then you’re going to be potting up much more frequently. The time before this, when she was potted up into this pot from a smaller pot, was quite a while, but she was reviving during that period before this second pot.

As I mentioned in that pot, it was probably likely that she would be going up a pot size fairly quickly, and that’s what happened. I think it’s been about four months now since that video was done, and now we’re doing this video, and she’s ready for a repotting.

So as mentioned, this is a great pot. Now, this pot has – I like these pots – these pots do work well. It does have a drainage hole in the bottom, and then it does drain around here. So what you do want to do with these, you obviously don’t want to have too much sitting in there, so you do want to make sure you get that excess water out of there when you water. But these generally tend to work pretty well for plants. It’s nice because that is on there, but you still have the drainage going on. You wouldn’t want to use one that didn’t have drainage holes, however.

The spider plants, they do like a moist, fairly moisture-retentive soil, but also with really good drainage. Okay, so that being said, Pro-Mix BX is one of my favorites. I’ll put links below for that and just the Pro-Mix products in general, and I’ll put another one or two of soils down there that work well as well.

Okay, so what you want to do, however, is make sure that whatever you’re using does have some draining agent in it. You can see in there there’s some perlite in here. You can also add pumice. This is from my pumice product here, and I do – I’ll put the link below for that. If you have a soil that seems like it’s moisture-retentive, which they like, but doesn’t have a lot of draining agent in it, you do want to add a draining agent like pumice or perlite to the soil. You could do one quarter of it, about one-quarter soil to one-quarter draining agent for the spider plant.

This one here – I’m going to add a little bit more pumice to it because I prefer pumice over the perlite. The perlite is very lightweight and tends to break down, and the pumice doesn’t do that.

Mixing this in, I do have a video on pumice as well and using that in your garden – at least one video that I can put the link for. Okay, so in this soil, I’m preparing the soil first for her repot in the soil. I also am going to add some of my Green Gourmet Houseplant Food. So here it is right here – I will put the link below. I have it on my website, and that is an organic food that is made for houseplants, and it’s going to help her grow really, really nicely.

So I’m going to put a little bit of that in here as well and mix that in. At the same time, I’m also going to do some worm compost. I love worm compost. There are videos on that as well, and it’s very low in micronutrients in terms of not – it’s hard to overdo worm compost. So that one, you can add a little bit extra of to the soil.

Okay, mixed it in. I already pre-moistened this soil. As I talk about in videos, I have a video on this particular topic that shows you what the soil should look like. You want the soil to be moist because if you plant with dry soil, what will happen is when you water, the plant will sink in the pot, and it will be way too low in the pot, which is also not a good thing. So you do want to pre-moisten – you don’t want it soggy, but you want it moist. As you can see, it creates a ball, but it can easily be broken. The ball is a sign of the best moisture for repotting.

Okay, now I’m going to take her out of this pot. Now, as I also mentioned, this combo here, if you don’t count the bottom tray – which you don’t want to – is potting up about a pot size bigger or pot and a half size bigger. You wouldn’t want to go up any more than a pot size bigger. I would not want to put her in a big pot. As I talk about in a lot of my videos too, you want two-thirds plant to one-third pot. So you can hold the pots up and say, “Okay, that looks like that’s going to be right,” and then that’s how you can choose.

Okay, so now we’re going to get her out of the pot. It’s not always easy to do if they don’t readily come out – you do not want to pull on them. So one method is to just gently tap like that on the edge, like I just did, and they will slide out. You can see she’s got some nice roots down there – that’s a really good sign that those roots down there will go ahead and engage with the soil that I’m going to put on the bottom of this and start growing readily. Also, the roots on the side – those will be happy to do this too. Signs that the plant is ready for repotting for if when you’re doing revival – the plant needs to be healthy looking, healthy looking, really vibrant, growing new foliage. She’s been growing since I potted her up into this other size pot, and the biggest thing with this plant was that she kept drying out.

So she was soaking up water about every two days – I was having to water her, and that’s a big sign. That’s like, “Okay, there’s lots of roots in there soaking up lots of water.” That means that the roots need more soil to grow in, but as mentioned, don’t put it in too big of a pot. If you put it in too big of a pot, you’re going to end up with root rot. I have a series on what to do if you think you’ve done that – I’ll put the link below.

Keeping that in mind, however, you want that two-thirds plant up top to one-third pot down below. Okay, so now I’m going to gently set her down while she waits, and I’m going to put some soil in the bottom of the pot. You want, on the bottom of the pot, about an inch or so, depending on the size of the pot. And what you want when you set the plant in is that the plant is going to not be sticking up too high but not be too low. Ideally, what you want is about a quarter of an inch around the top rim that is showing once you pat down the soil. That will allow you to water sufficiently where the water doesn’t flow out over the top because the plant’s too high, and at the same time, as mentioned, you don’t want it too low. Too low will create all kinds of problems, including root rot because it stays way too moist in there, and pests love to go in there because it’s a little humidity area for them to go crazy – so the plants don’t do well.

Okay, so now I’m going to go ahead and, as you saw, put the soil in the bottom. Then, you are going to figure out if it looks like it’s at the right level. If it is a little too high, you want to take out some soil and make sure because once you do all that planting, you’ll end up having to take it all apart if it’s too high or too low.

So now it looks like she’s doing well. You can also move the soil around a little bit down there too, and as mentioned, you do want to have some soil at the bottom for them to start growing their bottom roots in. Okay, then you want to make sure it’s centered, and I’m going all the way around with her, adding soil as I go. And you want to push down as you go because you don’t want any air pockets in there. If you have air pockets, what happens is the roots will dry out where those air pockets are, and then the roots will die where those air pockets are. If you get too few roots down below, you’re going to have a root rot problem because there’s too much wet soil around the remaining roots. So that’s something to keep in mind as you go.

Work your way around, keep working around until you get all sides. If you need to, you can use something like this bamboo stick or a wooden skewer to gently push it in. It’s a good way with deeper plants if your fingers can’t go all the way in to see if you’ve got the soil all the way down there. Be careful – the spider plant’s leaves are very fragile; they break very easily, so you do want to avoid messing up the leaves or damaging them in any way.

All right, so she’s all potted up in her new pot, looking fantastic.

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