Hi everyone, in this video, I will once again attempt to answer the age old question of
- is it better to propagate plants in water or soil? This time, I will be propagating
spider plants. I will put half of the spider plant babies directly in soil, and I will
put the other half in water first, wait for the roots to grow long enough, then transplant
them in soil. And I will compare the foliage and root growth for over 2 months.
To make the comparison more fair, all the spider plant babies I’m using are taken
from the same mother plant that I have in my home. I made sure to only choose plantlets
that have already formed a node, which is where the root can easily grow from. To get
the baby plants off the mother plant, I just cut as close to the plantlet as possible.
I’m going to take six of them for this plant experiment. After that, I divided the plantlets
into two groups, one for water, and one for soil propagation. I would’ve liked to use
more plantlets to have a bigger sample size, but um, that’s all this mother plant could
provide me with. It was also difficult to get the plantlets to be the same size, so
I just did the best that I could so that each group has a relatively large plantlet and
a relatively small plantlet.
For the water propagation, I filled a clear glass jar with some tap water, and placed
the spider plantlets in so that the nodes are submerged in water, but the leaves are
not. This way, the leaves are less likely to rot.
For the soil propagation, I filled a pot with approximately half houseplant potting mix
and half perlite, mixed it, made some dips for the baby spider plants to sit in. Then
I placed them in, and made sure that they are securely sitting in the soil. Then I gave
it some water, which is again, just tap water from my kitchen sink.
After that, I placed both water and soil propagations side by side in my southeast facing window
to receive plenty of sunlight.
From then on, I took care of the baby spider plants in water by topping off the jar with
fresh water whenever I see the water level is low to replace any water that has evaporated.
For the baby spider plants in soil, I kept the soil moist in the first month, which involved
giving it a small amount of water every couple of days. After the first month or so, when
the plant is slightly more established than before, I cut back on the frequency of watering.
So I started to let the soil dry out between watering, but I would water more thoroughly
when I do give it water.
Here are what the spider plantlets look like by the end of Week 2. The spider plant babies
in water have grown some really nice roots. I did want the roots to be slightly longer
before I place these in soil though, so I decided to not do it on this day. The ones
in soil looked similar to how they looked before. I guess it's hard to tell what's going
on beneath the soil since I didn't use a clear pot.
By the end of week 4 is when I decided to transplant the spider plant babies in water
to soil. I’ll show a close up shot of the roots when I take them out of the water, but
even from here you can see that they have formed longer roots than two weeks ago. The
ones in soil seemed to have gotten a bit bushier than before, but yeah, it’s a bit difficult
to measure how much spider plants grow. Anyways, I’m going to take the spider plant babies
out of the water. You can see that they are all healthy, and each of them has multiple
roots coming out from the bottom, as well as some nice secondary roots growing on the
side of the primary roots. Also a common feedback that I got from my last video comparing water
and soil propagation for pothos was that you wanted to see a comparison of the root growth
and not just the foliage difference. So, I’m now going to take the spider plants that’s
been growing in soil out, just to see what their roots like. I’m going to get them
out by hand. Some dirt will be stuck on the roots, so I’m going use water to get the
last bit off because rinsing the dirt off will be gentler for the plant than using my
hands. Again, I normally don’t take plants out of the soil like this because it does
disturb the roots, but I’m doing it for science.
And here you go, the ones growing in soil have whiter and thicker roots. And the roots
on all six spider plant babies are similar in length and all have some secondary roots
except for the one on the very right. So I would say, at this point in time, there’s
no clear winner between water and soil.
Now I’m going put the soil ones back into the pot. After I've done that, I'm going to
transfer the spider plant. And I’ve already prepared another pot of soil for the ones
in water. The process of transferring the spider plantlets from water to soil is very
straightforward. Just make some space for roots in the soil, place the plantlets in,
fill in the base with some soil so that the plantlet doesn’t fall over, and then give
it some water. Because the plantlets have been living in water for the past month, I
am going to keep the soil moist for the next few weeks just to help the plantlets get transition
from water to soil.
Now let’s see what they look like by Week 9.
Well first of all, let’s celebrate the fact that all the spider plant babies survived,
and no plant was harmed in this experiment. I would say that the plantlets from water
have slightly longer and a few more leaves than the ones in soil. All three stalks from
water are around the same size, whereas one of the plantlets in soil is really big while
the other two are rather small. I I do think this difference is due to the plantlets starting
off with different sizes. Now I am going to once again take all the plantlets out, get
rid of the oil, and take a look at the roots. The ones rooted in soil all have healthy roots.
The one with the longest leaves also has the most roots. And now look at the roots of the
spider plantlets rooted in water! Well they are all tangled up but it’s obvious that
they have way more roots than the spider plants directly planted in soil.
So I would say that water propagation won this round. But I want to also mention something
that I would consider a slight disadvantage for propagating spider plants with straight
leaves like mine in water. and that is when I was gathering materials for this experiment,
it was rather difficult for me to find a container with a neck narrow enough that the spider
plantlets didn’t just fall into the water, which may cause the leaves to rot. The container
I ended up using was an old glass jar for spices. And the neck was still a bit too wide
that I had to check on a regular basis to make sure that the spider plant didn’t just
fall in. For plants like pothos, you can hang the cutting on the edge of the glass, so you
shouldn't have this problem, but for a plant like this spider plant with straight leaves,
it might just be more convenient to propagate directly in soil, which grew slightly slower
in this video but it still grew, and it’s still healthy.
Anyways, what method do you prefer for propagating spider plants? Let me know in the comments.
And if you are interested in seeing more videos where I compare plant growth in water versus
soil, here’s a playlist I think you will enjoy. See you next time, bye!