Rehab for house plants

Our previous house plant blunder was Edition Sansevieria. This one we shall call Edition Airplane Plants.

Chlorophytum comosum, commonly called spider plant, is a very common house plant. I have heard that they are hard to kill. HA! Those folks must have never met Kyle and his cats! We kept them outside last year, but brought them in for the winter. Knowing the cats would have a field day with them, we put them on top of the refrigerator. Basically no sun and many forgotten waterings. Then we figured out the in garage on the window ledge....it's an east facing window, but that would be better than nothing. Still forgot to water them. At that points the cats were not allowed into the garage, in hopes we could protect our seedlings. The plants started to recover. Then came the cats once our seedlings were put out in the garden. They chewed off all the top growth. And knocked the pots off the sill. These plants are sad looking. Out to the front porch for a hot summer of rehab.

Why Edition Airplane Plants? As a kid I always called them airplane plants. I am not sure if my grandmother had called them that (she had given us a set before she died that we kept going for years) or if I came up with it. Perhaps it's because the baby plants reminded me of the small airplanes on amusement rides. Not sure, but to me they are not spider plants...they are airplane plants!

Dividing sansevieria trisfasciata 'Hahnii'

I divided my Sansevieria trifasciata 'Hahnii'....wow...I feel smart just for saying that. Let's just call them STH. It's a small house plant that evidently does a good job of cleaning toxins from indoor air. I had to do quite a bit of searching online to figure out what the heck it even was. Other sub-species are called Mother-in-Law's Tongue and are taller and more popular as house plants.

These plants came from one small "momma" that I "borrowed" from my mother's house. I don't know from where or how she first received her STH starts, but she had been growing and killing them for many years. Evidently both she and I were not doing this right, despite their tendency to sprout new plants and spread.

The one on the left was divided out last spring and has grown leaps and bounds over the other two. I assume it's the larger pot with a drain.

I got some general advice from Urban Jungle, a tropical plant service in Northwest Arkansas, that showed me just how wrong I was about them. They like very well drained soil and like to dry out very well between waterings...oops...those drain-less small clay pots or random containers with no drains were not cutting it. And judging from this picture, my small clay pots were far too small.

(root bound plants are not good)

My hunch appears to be right. Better drainage, don't be afraid to let them dry out, and they need a bigger pot. I hope the divided plants flourish in their new, more appropriate, pots.