Glasgow Girl's Babies ! (Spider Plant)

Member Name: Glasgow Girl

Product:	Spider Plant
Date:	08/09/01 (319 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Babies, Look Great and Easy to Grow

Disadvantages: NONE

Doo yoo know, I’m just after reading that Spider Plants -
otherwise known as Chlorophytum,
- that these gorgeous plants “…do well near an south window and enjoy filtered light.” What makes this of special interest to myself is that I presently have in my kitchen, no less than five Spider Plants; and one in particular, which is thriving beyond all expectations, is indeed on a corner shelf (therefore it is receiving ‘filtered’ light) and facing the kitchen door (which itself faces south).
When I recently redecorated my kitchen (not a regular occurrence in the auldmac/Glasgow Girl household) I wondered if my ‘grand scheme’ might not spell the death knell for the few wee plants I had managed to keep alive after my neighbour moved house (more on this later).

I painted the one wall of my
‘galley’(spin-doctor speak for minuscule )
style kitchen a deep sea-green, to contrast with the pale, summary green of the opposite wall and much to my surprise, the overall effect was and is rather pleasing to the eye.

When that was finished, I added some pine shelving, to house my recently burgeoning book collection and, as I mentioned earlier, my small but much loved collection of house plants.

The long shelves were for my books, with a little room on the end of each for one or two good looking specimens
(plants that is).

To finish off the re-vamp, I had two gorgeous little corner shelves, just right to fit in the corners of the wall which surrounds my kitchen’s only window.

As I said earlier, my up-stairs neighbour moved house and as a result,I lost what had been a reliable source of all-the year-round heat, which had suited my plants no end.

The reduction in heat, especially in overnight, regulated heat, had had a noticeable effect on my plants.
They lost fell back in their growth rate
and their fine appearanc
e,
and although they did not actually die,
they showed every sign of doing so quite soon.

I’m not sure why I decided to give my kitchen a ‘new look’, it might have had something to do with all the ‘Home Invaders’ type programmes I had been watching on television during my enforced break from learning -
(I would not be at all surprised if those 'things' have a subliminal content).
- all I know is that the third week of the ‘holidays’ I found myself, with paintbrush in hand, staring at the kitchen wall and thinking,
“Something’s got to give.”

Give it did - and less than three weeks later, I had my ‘new’ kitchen.

I’d had the paint in the house for ages so
– although I ‘slagged-off’ the
‘House Invaders’ folks for saying this very thing,
“It didn’t cost me a penny”
for the paint.
The shelves I bought weeks beforehand,
when the local DIY shop was closing down and everything was “Less Than Half Price”.
As a result, the whole thing hardly even dented the bank account …
wait a minute, I don’t have a bank account
– well not one with any money in it at any rate. (Nice word that, r-a-t-e )

To get to the main topic of this opinion, - among the plants I had had to move out of the kitchen (while I was painting) were my Spider Plants.
They had already been showing signs of wilting along with the others and the move out of their familiar kitchen environment, even though it was not a good as it once might have been, might well have been
‘a move too far’.
However, whether it was the fact that they like the repositioning they have received,
-from the work-top - up on to the corner shelves at each side of the south-facing window, or wether they liked the new ‘green look’
of their respective corners, I'm not quite sure. All I know is that my Spider Plants are now the prize of my collection, with the two which sit to either side of the window now flourishing, as I said earlier, beyond all expectations.

Leaves that were wilting are now
‘standing up for themselves’
and even those which are upright,
against the corner walls,
appear happy to be there.
I thought at first, the way I had ‘lifted’ the leaves so that they rested against the walls at their back, would not suit them as there was no direct light in those corners – I was lucky - it would appear and they like their ‘enforced’ repositioning.

The only real ‘maintenance’ they appear to need is regular watering, but not too much – an even temperature – not too hot, - feeding about once every two months – again, not too much feeding and – plus - whenever I see a leaf which has lost its colour, I remove it.

Something I picked up at a car-boot-sale has aided my plant maintenance regime and that is a wee set of ‘watering cans’ made of some sort of terracotta and which sit inside the ‘neck’ of the plant pot.
I simply keep these ‘topped-up’ and thereafter, they providing a steady supply of water to each plant. If that’s what’s meant by ‘plant maintenance’, it could be said, I maintain them rather well.

When you think about the way these great little (maybe not so little soon?) originate from some of the world’s hottest countries such as Africa, South America, Australia and Asia, it’s really amazing how easy and rewarding they can be to grow.

For anyone who has no idea what they look like
( "Just Visiting" - from another planet perhaps ?)
- their leaves are long, slim, and sort of lance-like, and they usually have parallel veins of white along th
eir length.

One of the reasons so many people like to grow these attractive plants is because of their ‘babies’.
These sprout from the centre of a ‘clump’ of leaves – and it can be quite exciting the first time you find one ‘giving birth’ in your kitchen – or your living room – if that’s where you like to keep your houseplants.

There are flowers, which precede the babies
- although they are rather unattractive.
The stems which hold the flowers can grow to some 30-60 cm with flowers of 2cm or more being produced.

The small plantlets or ‘babies’ as I like to think of them, can ‘weigh down’ the steams making them hang, pendant fashion.

What is an added bonus for a poor Glasgow Girl is that the wee babies need only to be fixed down into a plant pot with some potting compost to give yourself a whole new Spider Plant.

If you - like me - are keen on collecting ‘useless information’ –
then you might be interested to know that other ‘common names’ for the Spider Plant include Airplane Plant, St.Bernard's Lily, Spider Ivy and Ribbon Plant.

I suppose most folks would put them in a basket, and I also suppose that,
if I had a front-door house,
I would have mine out there right now – showing off my ‘babies’
to the neighbourhood,
but for me -
to paraphrase an old adage,
“East, West – my Kitchen’s Best”.

GG

Summary: