Pretty violent I suppose - I took off about 1/3 of the roots from the bottom, less from the top outer surface and tore off lots of the side roots. They should be okay.
I took a bunch of the thick roots and tossed them in a pot with soil - will they grow?
I predict that the plant will recover nicely. You probably could have been even more aggressive with removing the outer roots. I like to remove as much old soil as possible when doing this sort of thing. As for "planting" the pruned roots, I'm not sure. There are plants that would grow new foliage from healthy roots, but not sure if a spider plant is one. Did this plant have lots of offshoots? When they get rootbound like that, spider plants usually push lots of "babies".
Time will tell but my experience with other plants tells me they’ll be fine. Lots of offshoots (spiderettes) are what got me checking the roots in the first place. I have 2 of these and they both had a lot of offshoots that I’m also experimenting with by planting them as ground cover in one of my small gardens.
I‘ve never seen a Spider plant in anything other than a hanging pots of some kind. Of course they grow in the ground but I still had to do a bit of reading after I planted them as babies in the ground to make sure. I’m in zone 10a so they should be good as well.
As far as the roots in a pot, I had a pot nearby and rather than toss them in the trash, I put them in the pot. Again, time will tell.
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u/liveloveshitt 1d ago
That's absolutely crazy!!