Single leaf, leaf flag, peace lily - the tropical spathiphyllum goes by many names. The attractive houseplant with its dense, bushy growth, the large, dark green leaves and the mostly white, characteristically shaped flowers is one of the most popular ornamental plants in German living rooms. The distinctive plant is also considered to be very easy to care for, which also applies to its propagation: For this purpose, you only need to divide the bush into several individual plants.
The single sheet can easily be divided
Share a leaflet - when and how to do it
The best time to divide the single leaf is in spring, when the plant is transplanted into a larger pot with fresh substrate anyway. This approach has proven itself:
- Carefully remove the plant from its planter.
- If the single leaf is too tight, use a sharp knife to loosen the root ball and soil from the edge of the pot.
- Loosen up the root ball and gently shake off excess soil.
- Now divide the rhizomes together with the green leaves into several individual pieces,
- each should have at least three leaves.
- Use a clean, sharp knife if necessary.
- Plant the divided pieces individually in prepared pots.
- These should of course be adapted to the size of the individual pieces and therefore be quite small.
You don't need to divide the whole plant into many little plants - take as many new leaves as you actually want, even if it's just one. Since Spathiphyllum also grows very quickly, you can repeat the procedure every one to two years if necessary - always in connection with repotting.
Pot up and repot one leaf
So that single leaves feel good, you should put them in a larger planter once a year - preferably in spring - and at the same time provide the plants with fresh substrate. It is best to use a loose, nutrient-rich substrate with a pH between 5.7 and 6.8. You can often read that the ideal soil is based on peat. This may be true, but it should be avoided for environmental reasons. In order to cut peat, moors are still drained today, irretrievably destroying valuable habitats for rare animal and plant species. By the way: Of course, older, fully grown single leaves no longer need a larger pot, but the substrate should still be replaced every year.
tips
If you are lucky enough to get hold of Spathiphyllum seeds (only very rarely in the trade!), then propagation will also be successful with these. However, the seeds are not sown immediately, but first germinated at around 25 °C and high humidity. After germination, plant the small seedlings separately.