As a houseplant, the succulent arched hemp cuts a really good figure: not only does the plant, which is widespread in tropical Africa, have an interesting look thanks to its thick, straight-up leaves, it is also extremely easy to care for. Lovers of Sansevieria, as the plant is botanically called, can propagate it using simple methods. This is particularly easy to achieve using vegetative methods.
How can I propagate bow hemp?
The easiest way to propagate bow hemp is through leaf cuttings or dividing the root ball. Leaf cuttings are planted in nursery pots with cactus soil, while offshoots are separated when repotting and planted separately.
Promising: Propagation by leaf cuttings
If you propagate your variegated sansevierias using leaf cuttings, don't be surprised: These do not take on the color of the mother plant, but become a solid green like the original wild form. And this is how you proceed with this form of propagation:
- Take off a leaf from the sansevieria.
- Divide this into cuttings about 10 to 15 centimeters long.
- Put them in a bright and warm place to dry for a day or two.
- Fill cultivation pots with cactus soil (€12.00 on Amazon).
- Insert the cuttings about three to five centimeters deep,
- where the side is planted that was already the bottom of the leaf.
- For the project to be successful, the temperature must be at least 20 °C
- and also be bright (but not exactly sunny!).
- The first shoots only appear after a few months –
- So you need a lot of patience.
- Keep the substrate slightly moist until then
- and let it dry in between.
- Remove the old leaf once the cutting has formed one large leaf or several smaller leaves.
It actually always works: sharing bow hemp
Probably the easiest way to propagate arched hemp is to separate and plant the offshoots separately.
- You can easily combine this method with repotting.
- Get the whole root ball out of the pot
- and gently shake off the soil.
- Now carefully separate the offshoots from the mother plant with a sharp knife.
- You can also divide the whole plant by cutting it into several pieces.
- Plant the resulting individual plants separately in plant pots
- and place it in a warm and bright location.
- Avoid direct sun and drafts.
Quite a tedious task: sowing bow hemp
It is also possible, but quite laborious - since both a consistently high temperature and high humidity must be guaranteed over several months - to propagate bow hemp by sowing. You can buy the seeds online or in specialist stores or harvest them yourself. To do this, however, your Sansevieria must bloom and then produce seeds.
Tip
Bow hemp is said to sustainably improve indoor air.