The spider plant is one of the easiest houseplants to grow new spider plants from cuttings. A coworker who recently retired left us her mature spider plant with no less than 30 spider plant babies hanging from the mother plant.

The mother plant with all her spider plant babies still attached. To grow new plants from spider plant cuttings is easy. You just need to detach and root the babies and have some patience until they're ready to be transplanted.

Here's what you need to grow new plants from spider plant cuttings:
1 Clippers or scissors
2 Shallow container with water (clear is preferable to monitor growth)
3 Patience
4 (Eventually) Potting soil

How to Grow New Spider Plants from Cuttings

#1 Using sharp, clean scissors or clippers remove all the babies from the mother plant by clipping the stolon. The stolon is the yellowish stemlike growth from which the baby grows.Here you see the yellowish stolon from which the baby spider plant is growing.

#2 We cut the stolons near the base of the mother plant and then trimmed the stolons from the babies.Here are all the babies dangling from the stolons, which we first cut near the base of the mother plant and then trimmed off.

For now, we put all the babies into this unused ice cube tray (above) we found on top of the refrigerator in the office kitchen. We're upcycling! We're going to give these babies more growing room once we find a few more shallow containers...30 spider plant babies are a LOT of babies!

Help for the Mother Plant

#4 We suspected the mother plant had been in its container for many years so we also gave mama some love. It took some effort because she was rooted in, but once we got her out you can see that she was root bound.This is the mother spider plant once we freed her from her container. She's root bound and needs some help.

#5 This is the mother spider plant after careful but vigorous pruning and removal of old potting soil that clung to her roots.

#6 We've prepared a new container, this one has drainage, for the pruned mother spider plant.

#7 The repotted mother spider plant now resides next to her babies as they root in water in a west-facing window of HORTICULTURE headquarters. Mama and babies are doing well.

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Patty CraftAuthor