In polluted urban areas, growing snake plants indoors is a very good idea. Snake plants filter air indoors and keep the toxic air gases away.
A very low-maintenance plant, the snake plant is one of the few indoor plants that can survive even in low light, and because of its perennial nature, it can grow again even next year.
Most of the varieties of snake plants can live up to 15 years easily(once they grow), but only a few of them can grow up to 40-50 years.
How to grow snake plants indoors?
You can grow snake plants indoors in both manners; from seeds and cuttings.
Growing from seeds is a long process to grow and growing snake plant cuttings takes less time to become a bigger healthy plant.
Let's understand all the basics of growing snake plants indoors.
Growing snake plants indoors Vs outdoors
Although plants' nature is to grow in outdoor habitats sometimes few plants grow better indoors.
In hot regions, snake plants can't handle too high temperatures in summer outdoors in the least moist conditions. Either if the outdoor temperature is too low, it is also bad for snake plants as overmoisture or dry cold either can rot the roots or stop the overall growth.
It doesn't mean that you only can grow snake plants indoors. If moderate climate conditions are available outside, you can grow it on a rooftop easily. Although sometimes the day temperature remains moderate night temperature falls too low. In this case, snake plants can die faster. To prevent it from dying outside you need to winterize the garden.
Most of the time, every house keeps maintains a moderate temperature even in cold or hot seasons. So it becomes easier to grow them indoors with sunlight access.
Dark is not ideal for snake plant growth. It can handle partial shade but keeping it in dark for longer may affect the growth in a bad way.
Requirements to grow snake plant
The following are the general requirements to grow snake plants indoors-
Temperature and climate
In summer, you should keep your indoor temperature maximum up to 25 degrees Celcius.
In summer, it is not bad if you keep it as low as 18 to 20 degrees Celcius.
In winter, better to keep the temperature in the same range in the daytime. If the night temperature is dropping too low, it is bad for your plants.
Sunlight and shade
Generally, snake plants can grow in low sunlight in hot regions, but keeping it low may slow overall growth.
In cold regions, moderate sunlight is enough for snake plants but night temperature fall matters for snake plants.
Irrigation
Unless your pot's soil doesn't get dry, you shouldn't keep irrigation regular. Even you can irrigate your pots every 3 weeks if you find pots dry.
Overirrigation is bad for plants in winter and summer both if there is no drainage in pots.
Regular overirrigation can rot the roots of snake plants and can freeze them in winter.
Fertilization
With low maintenance quality, snake plants don't need regular fertilization. It is always better to provide them with organic compost.
Keeping it once every 6 months will help snake plants to grow and avoid diseases.
Containers
If you want to grow snake plants with seeds, then you can grow seeds in nursery cups for germination. For later growth, you can directly transplant them into bigger and deeper pots.
If you are propagating them from cuttings, you need deep and big pots.
The material of pots doesn't matter but their weight. Because we shift indoor plants from time to time, it is better to keep pots lighter in weight and easy to move. Plastic containers are good to grow snake plants indoors.
Apart from the material of containers, you should keep drainage holes in every pot.
Guide to growing snake plants indoor
The following steps will help you to grow snake plants indoors-
Selection of the right place
Most of the planters fail because of the wrong place selection for snake plants indoors.
If you are living in a hot region, then you can place plants in a shaded light area. In cold regions, you can keep and propagate snake plants in direct sunlight-catching windows.
In partial shade, plants can grow in summer but they will not live long in winter. So keep in mind that you need moderate sunlight for your plants overall.
Soil preparation
We need draining soil for snake plants. But draining soil doesn't need to be fertilized enough. So first, you need to make a fertile soil mixture.
Take garden soil, sand, and compost in a 1:3:1. It means, to make 5 kg drained fertile soil mixture, you need 1 kg garden soil, 3 kg sand, and 1 kg compost.
Take a big container or desk to mix these well. If your mixture is too dry then spray some water. Don't wet the soil and you are ready for seeding or propagating cuttings of snake plants.
Growing from cuttings and seeds
To grow snake plants from seeds, you need to fill your nursery pots first with the prepared soil mixture. Now, take high-quality seeds and sprinkle one or two seeds in each container. Don't spray water if the soil is enough moist.
Generally, it takes 4 to 5 weeks to germinate snake seeds. When these plants become slightly bigger about 3 to 4 inches, you need to transplant them in bigger pots. For that, you need to make a similar soil mixture.
To propagate from cuttings, you only should use fresh cuttings of snake plants.
Take bigger and deeper(30 cm diameter and 20 cm deep) pots and make them ready for drainage. Fill the prepared soil mixture in every pot and make the cuttings ready for this.
Use a small cultivator tool and make space for the lower section of the cuttings.
Now, place the cuttings 2 to 3 inches deep and cover them with the soil. Spray some water if the soil is not moist. Keep the pot in the sunlight area in your room. Let it grow and soon it will start generating new roots and new leaves.
Late spring and summer to early summer is the best time to grow snake plants from cuttings and seeds.
Snake plant care indoor
Although snake plant maintenance and cost are very low if you don't care for them properly then they may die faster.
Following are some tips and steps to care for snake plants indoors-
- The basic way to keep snake plants healthier is by providing them with sunlight for at least a few hours a day. Even light sunlight is helpful to save them.
- Don't keep them in too intense sunlight or it may affect their overall growth. And sometimes irrigation doesn't save snake plants in intense sunlight.
- Keep the fertilization in every 25 to 30 days so that you can keep moisture and avoid wet soil in your pots.
- Better to use organic compost as fertilizer for plants. Fertilizing once in 6 months period will help to keep their growth healthy.
- During the shifting of plants from dark, don't keep them in intense sunlight quickly. Snake plants can't tolerate this sudden change in temperature and sunlight.
- In winter, avoid irrigation and you can keep the plants outside in sunlight in the daytime.
- At night, you can winterize a particular section of your house to keep plants healthy even in drastic temperature drops.
- Avoid regular irrigation if the humidity is too high.
Pruning of snake plant
Snake plants can continue to produce more leaves in habitat conditions. Although, snake plants can grow tall up to 10 feet tall keeping them short helps to maintain them indoors. No one wants to let them expand and grow tall in their house.
That's why pruning snake plants is very important.
In pruning, we cut out extra leaves of each plant so that we can allow new and fresh leaves and remove older ones. It also helps you to not transplant them again and again.
You can propagate the removed leaves in new pots and you will get new plants. Be aware of using sharp tools to cut out leaves. Cut the leaves just above the soil level in the pot.
Thus, not even you care about snake plants while pruning, but you can get new cuttings for new snake plant propagation.