Those look ready to go! Is AV mix more chunky than regular potting soil? If not, I would use something that is, or add a significant amount of perlite to potting soil. Eventually your plants will make huge white roots, like carrots, designed to store moisture in times of drought. So, it doesn't need to be coddled with constantly soggy conditions, and can make use of a really deep pot, the deeper the better.

Thank you. The soil I have doesn't appear significantly chunky. I'm taking the bus out to the mall area this Saturday. Maybe I'll find a smallish bag of perlite or something at Walmart. If not, I'll ask to be dropped off at Home Depot. Potting plants when living in a dorm room is going to be tricky.

That sounds good. The bus won't take me to Home Depot, so I'm stuck with Walmart. A few plastic pots then and I'll plant them, and repot them over summer break.

Sounds like an excellent plan, in which case a Solo cup or other appropriated container that's easy to poke a hole in the bottom, would probably serve your purpose.

Excellent point, jpciii! Packing the soil tight in any container is something I try to avoid, and water gently at least the first few times, so the gushing water doesn't compact soil, sometimes using a spray bottle for smallish newly potted plants, to mist the soil surface until the pot is "watered." As well as maintaining tiny air spaces, roots should be able to creep easily through loose, fluffy stuff.

I'm taking the bus out to the mall at noon. My shopping list includes fertilizer for my little haworthia that I haven't yet introduced. Should I get some for my spider plants, and what type? I know with some plants you shouldn't fertilize right after repotting, so how soon after should I start?

IDK. My spider plants have gone an entire decade before with no fertilizer, just repotting every year or two.

That's good- I didn't buy anything but the fertilizer for my haworthia. I'll pot my plants as soon as I can. Hopefully that will be today.

Here they are potted. One's in a regular pot, the other's in a McDonald's milkshake cup covered in duct tape with a hole poked in the bottom. I did what was suggested, and kept the soil as fluffy and unpacked as I could. My dorm room is very messy, and the pictures show it.

They look good!

Good luck with them

Just a hint about rooting new plantlets of various types.

I've found when rooting cuttings (or offshoots like yours) that I've had very good success with just sticking them directly into your choice of potting mix, without even pre-rooting them in water first.

The trick after putting them into the (moist) soil is to cover the cutting with a clear plastic bag and secure it around the pot with a rubber band. This sets up a greenhouse-like microclimate for the cutting so it doesn't get a chance to wilt before it's rooted.

This may not work for every type of houseplant, but it has worked for me for many, many types over the years, and saves that extra step of rooting them in water first.

I take the bags off in stages when I see evidence of growth from the cuttings. First I open a hole for some air to get in, and over the course of a few days to a week slowly expose the cuttings to less and less 'greenhouse protection'---i.e. I harden them off slowly so they get used to less than ideal humidity.

(The picture shows Peperomia Acuminata cuttings on a north windowsill.)

I also root my spider plants in potting mix. I didn't even put a bag over them. But they do get droopy the first couple days. I put them in moist mix and I spray the plant with a little water. You know they have started to grow roots when the plant leaves start standing up. Spiders grow roots so easily that it only takes a couple days for the plantlet to start looking healthy. Here is one I potted 6 days ago.

That's a very healthy looking spider plant RioSeven.

These plants like to live in places where there is the occasional (well, frequent) mist spray around their foliage, such as in a rain forest. They need good drainage though, such as they would get if hanging around in trees. It's the sort of 'indoor' plant that often doesn't look very well due to over-zealous 'care', with owners pouring the water on by the gallon and wondering why their plant is screaming.

Sometimes they will get dark tips on their leaves and I think this is due to over watering. Or they will have a bleached look if given too much light (in a glasshouse for instance).

My larger plant has a few dark tips, but it did before I potted it. I think the water I was using was too hard- I'm watering with distilled water from now on. The only spider plants I've lost were due to my cats at home. They love them. I've had them eaten to the soil line and recover, so I can attest to their hardiness. I was away for the summer though, and they went after them again. I didn't find out in time to let their caretaker know to keep watering them, and she must have stopped assuming they were dead. That, of course, meant that they were dead when I got back. All four of them- they were the only ones I had at the time. I've since gotten more and keep the cats far away from them.

I have never given my plants tap water but the spiders always get brown tips. I think it might be impossible to avoid. My brown tips are not bad, but they are there. Other things will cause brown tips and it is probably hard to avoid all the causes.

I was using tap water to root them, as I didn't have enough distilled water to change the water frequently enough. That was a mistake- I won't do it again. I'm walking down to the store to buy more distilled water as soon as I can. It doesn't look like that will be today though- winter appears to have returned.

Instead of buying water for them, why not boil the tap water, let it cool and use that? There will be no chlorine in it then.

Yes, probably the dark tips have all sorts of causes.

The more distilled water I have the better- I can take it home over summer break, and my Venus fly traps will have more water. They can't tolerate minerals in the water- for them it's more than just the chlorine. I was depressed last night after messing up in a lab class, so I bought both the water and a new spider plant. I potted it into the largest pot I had, but it will need a larger pot as soon as I can get one. It was very very root bound, and has a number of brown tips and broken leaves. I'll leave those on until it recovers- I expect at least a bit of shock after the repotting last night- it lost a lot of roots. None of the tubers came off though, which is good.

Boiling water does not remove non-volatile (can't evaporate) substances such as fluoride and lime. Most municipalities use a more modern form of chlorination that is also non-volatile. The advice to let the chlorine evaporate from sitting or boiling is left-over from the past, when a different (volatile) form of chlorination was used.

Besides distilled or rain, condensate from a dehumidifier or A/C would be other sources of water with nothing added (and no minerals that can alter PH or make some plants ill with repeated applications.)

Spider plants make big roots that look like white carrots. If a shallow pot is used, they will reach the bottom & be forced to mush & circle against each other. Whenever this happens, foliage can start to suffer like in the pic below. Every time I've repotted a struggling-looking spider plant over the past decades that I've had them, this is what I find. When I've dug up plants from the ground (hardy here,) the roots are about 5x as big, and over a foot deep, going straight down.

That's basically what I found, although in a much smaller pot. I tried to separate the roots a bit, so that when I get a larger pot they will be ready to grow down rather than around. I can get one soon, but I'll need more soil also.

I have time later today, so I'm going to go down to the store to get a large pot and some soil.

cleo_13, how are all your spiders doing now? Good growth?

They are currently recovering from having met my cats, unfortunately. They all (including the one eaten to the soil line) have lots of new growth. I expect they'll bounce back- I've seen it happen before.