Keeping plants inside is still a kind of “gardening,” right? Well, I don’t have anything else to post about the outside garden today, so I’m straying off on a slight tangent.
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There’s one of the places that I will be overwintering some of the plants that won’t survive outside from October through April. The “plan” was to set up multiple areas like this, complete with fluorescent lights, in three or four rooms in the house. To my disappointment, the studs in my walls are 24” inches apart (not 16” as I had hoped), and so I need to buy the 4-foot shelves instead of the two-foot shelves. A simple job likes this costs nearly $40, so maybe the three-to-four-room plan isn’t going to work out. In any case, I need somewhere to keep my plants (and we will need somewhere to grow seedlings next spring anyway) where the cat can’t get to them.
Oh yeah, spider plants. The plant above is the only one I have that is sending out a shoot! I steal the spider babies from my uncle’s house every Christmas, and dutifully kill most of them shortly thereafter. This particular spider plant was eaten down to the dirt four or five times (seriously!!) by my old roommate’s cat. Well, the cat is gone and though our new cat hasn’t yet expressed an interest in my houseplants, I’m keeping them out of reach from now on.
I’ve fought with spider plants for six years now, after learning that they are the “easiest house plants to care for.” Right. Well, the ones I have now are eight months old, and maybe they’ll make it to a year. Here’s what I’ve learned over my years of spider plant experience:
- Don’t over-water your spider plants. If you do over-water them, though, they will happily suck up as much as you give them. Then they grow fast and need to be repotted. Over-watered spider plants have giant roots, all big and puffy like potatoes. But don’t worry – they will die soon enough.
- Ignore your spider plants. If you find yourself thinking, “oops! I haven’t watered the spider plants for a month!” don’t worry. They’ll be just fine (see #1).
- Occasionally, let your cat eat your spider plants all the way down to the dirt (or snip them off if you don’t have a cat). This is fascinating. The one spider plant that was eaten by a cat came back with a vengeance! The leaves are twice as thick as the other spider plants, and in two months it was larger than the others, and had already put out a shoot with babies!
- Don’t sunburn your spider plants. They do like to be outside in the summer, but please put them in the shade. Too much sun will only make their leaves turn clear, and then they will die.
The end!
