Hi Amber,

It does look cute and it should work fine, at least up to a point. Once the roots expand to the point where you cannot get the rootball out of the narrow top, then you may be faced with the choice of damaging the plant or the container.

~Will

I love it! Never thought of a jug for that.. But like Will said- may be a prob later on. For the moment tho-- I think it will be ok. But thats me- :)

And yes-- it is cute!

Hi Amber...I too think the tea pot is cute, but like Will stated, when your Spider matures along w/roots, you may have to choose between breaking the container or 'smooshing' roots.
Healthy Spider plant roots are naturally thick.

The spout looks low enough to drain excess water, so that's good. You may need to tilt to get extra water out, but no biggie.

How tall is the tea container?

Hi Marj. Toni

The two issues you'll need to consider are, A) the reservoir of water that will remain at the bottom of the container because the drain is higher than the container bottom. Unless you water in sips to ensure soil remains damp and no water accumulates at the container bottom, you'll have gases that include sulfurous compounds, methane, and CO2 produced during the anaerobic decay process in the saturated area. If you DO water in sips to avoid the conditions I just described, salts from your fertilizer and tap water will accumulate in the soil. This is particularly an issue with spiders because they don't tolerate a high level of solubles of any kind in the soil (solution). Drilling a hole in the bottom of the container is a potential remedy, but first consider, B) clear containers and direct sun don't mix well. The clear glass allows almost all of the light to pass through the glass. When it strikes the dark soil, it's absorbed and turned to heat. Essentially, you have a passive solar collector that can easily raise soil temperatures well above 120* in direct sun - enough to kill the plant or severely damage the root system. For that reason, you should avoid siting the plant in direct sun - even if there is insect screen acting as a partial shade mechanism.

If you're sentimental about a particular plant, it's true that getting it out of the container would take a considerable amount of work that will certainly damage the plant. I don't see that as a significant issue because when you transplant you'll be root pruning anyway - hopefully. Also, like many folks, you might consider the plant disposable. I see you have cuttings started already, so it's no big deal to replace one plant with another. If your goals happen to include seeing how large you can grow the plant, another container choice would be advisable. The container would be great for making solar pickles. Recipe upon request.

Al

Hi, Amber:

Container is really cute....but not a very good one for long-term growing of a plant.

1. Even tipping, you won't get all of the water out
2. Sun will bake it
3. Can't get rid of salts.

However, there is a solution:

Have you thought of putting it in a separate pot and surrounding it with colorful stones or gravel? Clear plastic drinking cups would work if you put holes in the bottom. This could be done with any glass container. I did it with several Depression glass pieces.

Then you would have your container, a nice background for the drawings instead of dirt and the salts would be removed when you watered. You could then drain most of the water from the stones through the spout. And if you see algae on the stones you can wash with bleach, rinse really well and reuse.

You could keep your spider plant in the tea jug forever because you could repot (root pruning a must) back into the same pot.

Just an idea. But the nice thing is you could change the pebbles or rocks any time you wanted a different look without hurting the plant. I would not use those rehydrating colored thingies people put "Lucky Bamboo" in as they would defeat the purpose.

Linda

PS: We all know you're not one who thinks of plants as disposable. Just asking us if your spider plant would be happy in that container is proof of that. ;-)

P.S. IMO your spider plant is way over-potted in that container, anyway.

Linda

Thanks Linda for stating what I thought, it's too deep a container for that spider & I'd expect the plant will fade after a while from being too wet too long.

thank you everyone for your thoughts and ideas! a lot of the thoughts about the possible problems i had wondered about but had to get a second opinion.

linda- i love your idea to have it planted in a smaller container with stones or such around it, i think thats exactly what im gonna do, it would look so incredibly cool like that so thank you for the idea!

Well, Amber, you'd better post us a photo when you do. I'll be watching. :-) Plus, think of all those other neat containers you could do it with!

Karen: Great minds and all that. I hit "submit" just as I realized I had forgotten about the overpotting.

Glad to Help and Happy Gardening,

Linda