How to Pot Up Snake Plant Pups

Nearly the moment I got this $7 buddy home from IKEA last summer, it began producing these little spike-babies. I knew I’d get lots of new, free plants off it — what a bargain! — but I had no idea what I was in for until I started peeling back the layers.

Once you get the snake plant out of its pot, gently brush away some of the soil so you can see where the pups are connected to their mom. The white part of the pup is where the soil level sits, and the orange part — the rhizome — is the underground portions of stem that produces roots.

Once you see what’s what, take a sharp, clean knife or pair of scissors and make a cut below a root so that the pup has some roots of its own to have a strong start out in the world. It can be hard out there for a baby pup! Pot these pups in fresh soil, packing the soil up to where the white part of the stem turns green.

As I was snipping away my little babies for their new homes and making my way toward the mom plant, I found something I wasn’t expecting: the plastic basket that originally contained the plant at the propagation house (the nursery where it was likely first born as a cutting before making its way to IKEA). All the snake plant pups I’d been trimming away had squeezed between the slits of the basket, and the mom plant was strangling in the center, bulging the basket with her root strength! I carefully snipped this basket off with scissors and gently teased it off the roots, then repotted the mom in fresh soil.

When I was finished, I ended up with sixteen snake plant pups in all, which I divided into four pots (in addition to the original plant, which I returned to its original pot, now roomier sans pups).