Curly spider plants – aren’t they simply fascinating? They have a unique and unorthodox look and do well to stand out from other plantlife despite being green. Let’s take a look at how to best water the curly spider plant for it to have a healthy, long-lasting life.
You should water your curly spider plant as soon as the soil begins to dry. Factors such as temperature, humidity, rainfall, and soil greatly determine how often you need to water your curly spider plant. In most cases, it usually comes down to one watering per week.
You will likely have to devise the optimal watering routine for your situation according to the factors mentioned above. Fortunately, I’m here to guide you – let’s find out how you can ensure your curly spider plants receive the perfect amount of water at the right time, every time.
Setting the Ideal Watering Routine for a Curly Spider Plant
The good news is that curly spider plants are relatively hardy and can take a bit of a beating from environmental factors. This means you have plenty of room for error, which makes curly spider plants ideal for beginners.
Nevertheless, you do want a consistent watering routine so that the plant can grow up to be as healthy, beautiful, and visually pleasing as possible.
If you prefer a more laid-back, hands-off approach to gardening, you can go with a once-per-week watering routine. However, that single round of watering per week will likely need to be plentiful.
A once-per-week routine might not be perfect, but it’s probably good enough to keep your spider plant alive. If you live where the temperature stays moderate and extreme weather conditions are infrequent, you’ll likely be fine.
As mentioned, curly spider plants are hardy and will make up for most minor shortcomings on your part.
For curly spider plants, you want to water until the soil is hydrated and damp but not so saturated with water that water begins to stagnate. One thing to remember if using a pot: always use a pot with a drainage hole. Stagnant water kills even the more resilient plants by eating away at their roots.
For this reason, you need to wait until the soil begins to dry up again before rewatering. As mentioned, this typically takes around a week under normal conditions. This can be less frequent in colder seasons; in the winter, you can expect to have to water once every two weeks.
Unfortunately, you’re going to have to be a bit more stringent if you live in an environment with extreme weather (including humid, dry, hot, or cold temperatures). These conditions affect the amount of water your curly spider plant will need.
The best watering routine is one that’s personalized and specific to your location and situation.
As a side note, and just in case you’re wondering: curly spider plants differ from regular spider plants. You can check out the differences between the two here: Curly Spider Plant Vs. Spider Plant: 6 Differences
Factors To Consider When Watering Spider Plants
Let’s take a look at the factors that determine how much water a plant needs:
- Temperature
- Humidity
- Rainfall
- Soil
We’ll go into some detail about these factors below, and I’ll share with you some interesting facts along the way, so let’s get started.
Temperature
Temperature is probably the most important factor in determining a plant’s water needs. It directly influences the rate at which water leaves the soil via evaporation and the rate at which it leaves the plant body via transpiration.
It helps to be aware of the temperature of your plant’s surroundings. If you live in a high-temperature area, your curly spider plant and the soil around it will dry out noticeably faster, so you’ll have to water more frequently.
Curly spider plants can tolerate dry soil for a while, but extended periods of dehydration are a threat to their health.
Conversely, if you live somewhere cold, you probably won’t have to worry about being on top of your watering routine that much.
Humidity
Like temperature, humidity affects how often you’ll have to water your plants; it influences the magnitude of evaporation and transpiration that can take place. The more humid the air, the less water your plant will need.
The mechanism by which this happens is complex, but here’s what you need to know: as the humidity increases, the air becomes more saturated with water molecules. This makes it increasingly difficult for evaporation to occur, so your plant and the surrounding soil lose less water over time.
Living in an area with high humidity can be pretty uncomfortable for us humans. But if it’s any consolation, at least your curly spider plant is enjoying it! Curly spider plants, originating from southern Africa, have an exceptional affinity for humidity. Some experts even recommend placing them in rooms with humidifiers!
Rainfall
This one’s pretty much a no-brainer. If you keep your curly spider plant outside and there’s any amount of significant rainfall, you can probably skip out on the next due watering session. If there’s little to no precipitation where you live, your personal watering effort will have to take on the brunt of the load.
Soil
The type of soil you use is very important in determining how frequently you’ll have to water.
I’m not talking about nutrient composition and fertility in this case. Interestingly, that aspect of soil selection has relatively low priority when it comes to curly spider plants. They’re adaptive and hardy and can settle down in pretty much any kind of decent-quality soil.
The aspect we want to look at is moisture retention. Some types of soil are considerably better at retaining moisture than others. Soils that can retain moisture are usually better than ones that can’t.
This not only applies to curly spider plants but most plants used in gardening today. Most plants appreciate having soil that retains moisture.
Additionally, you can alter the moisture retaining properties of existing soil with the use of additives. One of the most common ways gardeners improve moisture retention in the soil is by applying a layer of mulch around the base of their plants.
Mulch also improves soil fertility, so it’s doubly beneficial.
Signs of Underwatering and Overwatering
For better or worse, a large part of setting up a watering routine is trial and error. No, I’m not saying that you have to risk damaging your plants.
What I mean is that you’ll need to reevaluate the amount of water your plant needs after each of your first few watering cycles. You can get a pretty good idea of that based on the dryness of the soil and the condition of your curly spider plant.
Let’s take a look at signs of underwatering:
- Green color fading away
- Weak and spindly
- Dry leaves
- Discoloration
The signs of overwatering are somewhat similar, so it can be hard to differentiate the two on a surface level. Of course, it becomes much easier when you know how much water the plant has received and consider the once-per-week average guideline.
Signs of overwatering:
- Rotting root system
- Leaves turning brown or black
- Damaged, lifeless plant
- Oversaturated soil
When signs of either overwatering or underwatering do appear, you can be sure that something is wrong—especially considering how durable curly spider plants are.
Best Practices for Watering Curly Spider Plants
Before you go, let’s discuss some best practices related to watering curly spider plants.
Use Distilled Water
Hardy as they are, curly spider plants have a weakness of their own. This plant species is particularly vulnerable to the high quantities of salt in regular tap water. This won’t be noticeable immediately, but the salt will saturate the soil over time and begin to hurt the plant.
If your curly spider plant looks unhealthy and the problem is not related to sunlight or watering inadequacies, chances are your plant is dealing with salt buildup.
Try using distilled or pure water in this case. Unfortunately, this can be an inconvenience if you’re growing curly spider plants on a large scale.
Don’t Water the Foliage Directly
The age-old advice of not watering the foliage is applicable to curly spider plants. A common myth suggests that watering foliage amplifies the effects of sunlight and leads to burns. That’s somewhat far-fetched.
There are a few main reasons you shouldn’t water the foliage directly:
- It’s an inefficient use of water.
- It increases the likelihood of disease (fungal growth, in particular).
More Water, Less Often
As a gardener, you may have thought about watering in lesser quantities more frequently. However, that’s ill-advised. Doing so results in the target plants foregoing their natural tendency to extend their roots downwards in search of water, developing a shallow root system.
This is a problem because shallow roots are more vulnerable to environmental damage and unable to gather water from deeper parts of the soil.
It will take less time for the affected plant to succumb to a water shortage.
Final Thoughts
Water your curly spider plant once a week if you experience average conditions. Water generously, but don’t allow water to stagnate. If you live in extreme conditions, it can be beneficial to devise a custom watering routine based on your specific environment.
While that may sound like a daunting task, it’s actually pretty simple. All you have to do is water whenever your soil starts to dry out. Curly spider plants are resilient to water damage, so it’s hard to go wrong.
Even if you do, water damage is often reversible.
