Making Babies (No, not like that!)

I have never been a terribly successful gardener and have definitely never had a house plant last more than a couple of weeks at the most.  I had thoroughly accepted these facts and filled my house with the sporadic fake plant, and fresh cut flowers as much as I could possibly afford.  Yes, my plant parent negligence was not my favorite downfall, but I became used to it and moved along.  Until I moved to Montana.  My sweet sister-in-law is an avid collector of house plants, and her house simply breathes with green and life. Being in her home, I couldn’t help but want to try my hand again, and she made that possible.  She brought me to her favorite nursery, and I chose a few plants to start my process.  Now, I can’t remember which of the plants existing in my house were part of that first purchase, but I can tell you that, since then my confidence and skill in keeping my plant menagerie alive has grown by leaps and bounds.  So much so, that I decided to try take the next step in plant management and transplant the baby spider plants that I had sprouting from the mommy.

Last year my eldest, Atticus, had the great privilege to attend “The Backyard Learning Project”.  BLP was the exceptional solution that Haleryn gave us to allow our children not to return to public school during the height of the pandemic.  She created a one room schoolhouse where she with the assistance of another dear teacher friend, taught ten first to third graders an entire year of school.  Haleryn is fantastic teacher who had intended to take a year off to spend time with her then infant, but we posed the idea to her, and she rose to the task in the incredible way that only Hal can.  This year was full to the brim with expert instruction, thorough attention to detail, and fun projects.  They could not have received a better education in any other classroom.  I have Atty’s art and creations from this year sprinkled around the house, brightening all corners they live in.  One of my favorites of these is the spider plant he gifted me for Mother’s Day.  The pot is decorated in bright splashes of purple and green and blue, all hand painted by my boy.  I have lovingly tended this plant for almost a year now managing to not only keep it alive but allowing it to thrive and grow several offshoots with a while bunch of babies.  I left them to grow on the mini vines for quite a long time and finally decided that it was time to try to give these babies a chance to grow in their very own pots.

I collected the required materials and the necessary helpers, and we began this foray into the green thumb life.  Now, as I have said before, I am no expert in plant husbandry, but I was assured that all I really needed to do was to separate them from the parent and plop them into new pots.  I began this project under that assumption.  To do this, we collected several different pots, some which I had at the house and a few other simple terracotta pots the hardware store yielded us.  I also purchased a big ole bag of potting soil, definitely much bigger than I needed for this project alone, not really paying attention to the brand but just going with the most sunshiny yellow bag.  Then I extracted the box of gardening tools that Gamma uses every time she is in a weeding mood here at the house, pulling the trowel and the clippers, and sent Atty off to get me a pitcher of water to keep these babies fresh and fed.  Then, well, we dove into the dirt.

It is my understanding that there are several ways to grow spider babies into full on plants, the two most common are snipping those little nuggets off and planting them right in loose soil in a pot or snipping them and allowing them to grow roots in a jar of water and then planting those little beauties once their roots have grown to a lovely size.  The first option was what I went with initially.  I let Atty grab the clippers and try to cut the babies off.  (He is left-handed so all “normal” scissor like implements tend to be difficult for him to use.)  Despite the struggle that was presented to him, he managed to get the little plants off successfully and we were on to step two of our project.  Jasper was the engineer of this step.  Now, most of you might question why I allowed the three-year-old to do the dirt scooping, but I figured we were outside, and I needed to let go of the possibility of making a mess of dirt.  And boy am I glad that I did.  My little boy was so happy to have job and that was worth the mess.  He filled each pot mostly full.  It was time to officially plant out little babies.  Part of me still thinks that this was just too easy and only time will tell if that is, in fact true, but I was assured by several sources that all we needed to do was just push them into the soil, give them a good water and that was it! That is just what we did.

When I ran out of pots to nestle the tiny plants into, I figured we could test out the second method for planting.  The ones we had left were the smallest of the group so I figured we could use tiny jars placed in our kitchen window for now. Atty ran to my vast cache of mason jars, found the bitty jam jars, and used the last of the water in the pitcher to fill those 4oz jars up.  We gingerly popped them into their new little wet homes.  Again, it seemed like it was too easy, but I am hoping that this works too. 

So far, all the plants that we have placed in pots and jars are still alive.  My boys were so enamored of the process and the new plants we now had the responsibility to care for, they each begged for one of their own.  I have tried to give Atty a plant or two before, but they have not stood the test of time.  With each one though, he has been so excited, I keep believing that this time around this is going to be the one.  Spider plants are relatively easy to keep alive so perhaps this is the one.  It just needs to survive the transplanting process.  And of course, because his brother got one, my sweet baby boy needed to have his own plant in his room too.  He chose the one in the special pot he picked out at the store and very carefully placed it on his dresser right in the light of his lamp.  To be honest, upon further reflection that very plant seems to be the baby that has survived most successfully.  I’m keeping all my fingers and toes crossed that these two and the others come through the process with flying colors.  If not, we have the second round growing roots in their little water beds looking out on our front yard.  But I really do hope that they all pull through.  I’ll be sure to update everyone on the growth of our first green thumb project!