How to Repot a Snake Plant Without Damaging the Roots

Snake plants will put up with being ignored for months and still look fine, so the pot one came home in tends to stay on for years longer than it should, and by the time most people think about repotting the roots have already made their own arrangements and are coming out the bottom.

There is an awkward way to do this job and a tidy way, and the difference is almost entirely how much of a hurry you are in, because the roots on a snake plant are thick and full of water and they bruise if you drag the plant out by its leaves.

When it is actually time

You do not need to do this every year. Once every 2 to 3 years is plenty, and these are the things worth looking for.

• Roots coming out through the drainage holes, which is the clearest sign of the lot.
• The soil drying out within a day or two of watering, because the roots have taken up most of the room the soil used to be in.
• The pot bulging, cracking or going oval on you.
• Leaves leaning out sideways because there is nothing holding them upright at the base any more.

If two of those are true then get on with it, and if only one is it can wait, because a snake plant sitting slightly snug is a lot happier than one swimming in a pot three sizes too big.

What you need

• A pot 2 to 5cm wider than the one it is in, with drainage holes in the bottom.
• A free draining mix. A cactus and succulent mix is the easy answer, or a standard potting mix opened up with a couple of handfuls of propagating sand or perlite.
• Gloves, if you would rather not spend the evening getting dirt out from under your nails.
• A hand trowel, and clean scissors or secateurs for any roots that have gone off.

The job itself

Water it a couple of days beforehand, not on the day

Slightly damp soil comes away from the pot in one piece and bone dry soil crumbles off the roots as you lift it, so watering 2 or 3 days ahead makes the whole thing easier on both of you. Soaking it that morning does the opposite and you end up working in mud.

Lay it on its side and ease it out

Tip the pot over, support the base of the plant with one hand and squeeze around the sides of the pot with the other until the soil lets go, and if it is properly stuck then run a blunt knife or an old plant label around the inside edge. The leaves are not handles, and pulling on them is how the crown gets damaged.

Look at the roots before you do anything else

Healthy snake plant roots are firm and pale, somewhere between white and orange. Anything soft, dark or smelling sour gets cut off with clean scissors, because that is rot and it will keep going once it is in fresh mix. Shake the loose old soil off, but do not scrub the lot away, since leaving some around the roots takes a bit of the shock out of the move.

Set it at the right height

Put a shallow layer of fresh mix in the bottom, sit the plant on it and check the height before you fill around it, because you want the base of the leaves sitting just above the soil line and the soil about 2cm below the rim of the pot. Buried too deep and the base rots, sat too high and the water runs off the top instead of soaking in.

Backfill, then leave it alone

Fill around the root ball and press it in gently with your fingers to get rid of the air pockets, without packing it down hard. Then give it a light water and walk away for a week. That last part is the one people get wrong, because a plant that has just had its roots handled needs to seal off the cut ends before it sits in wet soil again.

What goes wrong

• Too big a pot. A generous pot holds more soil than the roots can drink, the middle of it stays wet, and that is how you get root rot in a plant that almost never dies of anything else.
• The wrong mix. A standard potting mix on its own holds too much water for a snake plant, so either use a cactus and succulent mix or open a regular one up with sand or perlite.
• Watering it straight away and then again a few days later. Wait until the mix is dry most of the way down before the second drink, and when you are not sure, wait longer.

How long before it does anything

Not quickly. A repotted snake plant will often sit there looking exactly the same for 4 to 6 weeks while it puts roots out into the new mix, and then a new leaf comes up from the base with no warning at all. Nothing happening is not the same as nothing working, which is worth remembering before you start poking at it to see what is going on.

Nobody starts out knowing any of this, and I am self taught on most of it, which is the good thing about a snake plant, because it will forgive you a fair bit while you work out what you are doing.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Easy Wetta Potting Mix 70L. The base mix, opened up with sand or perlite for anything that hates wet feet.
• Brunnings Propagating Sand 5L. Coarse sand to get the drainage right through a heavy mix.
• Brunnings Perlite 5L. Light, and it keeps air pockets around the roots.
• Brunnings Horticultural Charcoal 5L. Goes through an indoor mix to keep it sweet between waterings.

Did you know we also stock Brunnings Cactus and Succulent Potting Mix 5L, plastic pots in 18cm and 28cm, gardening gloves and Gardenmaster hand trowels in the shop. Not all of it is on the website, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is on the shelf.

The rest of the indoor and outdoor range sits in the garden centre at H, and if you are not sure which mix suits what you are growing then come in and ask us, because that is a two minute conversation in the shop and an hour of reading otherwise.

Keep reading

• Where to put a snake plant so it actually grows
• How to build an indoor garden with monstera and snake plants

Cheers,

Candeece

I still have to stop myself buying the bigger pot every single time, because the bigger pot always looks better in the shop and always suits the plant worse.