There's a few stems, not sure how many plants are there…
by Much-Yogurt8896
There's a few stems, not sure how many plants are there…
by Much-Yogurt8896
22 Comments
I just did this & posted a picture of my rinsed off roots.
I sprayed mine off with the hose on jet setting. I separated them, reoriented in the pot, and put back in the same pot together for a fuller look. I even have a third growing off of one.
If your goal is to keep it big and let it grow even bigger, just plop that whole thing into a bigger pot and add new soil around it.
I have a similar one and it’s completely fine to just leave it.
You can just add new soil around the root ball and size up the pot. Untangling that would take a veryyy long time and probably lots of broken roots too. In the future if you want to separate them you could take top cutting to propagate.
I would separate them. Leave it in a bucket of water for a couple of days. They’ll naturally separate a little and will be a lot easier to manage. Give 1 or 2 to family or friends. They’ll be happier in the long run.
If I get plants this root bound, I never separate them. Too risky for damage, and the plant really doesn’t *need* it. They’ll figure it out in their own (:
Google says gently untangle
I did it once. Wetted the roots which made it easier to untangle. I was not being very careful.
No problems afterwards.
I saw someone slice the bottom with a chef knife. Plant was not hurt, kept growing.
Plant it in the new pot as it is, or cut off most of it off. The Monstera won’t care. It will continue to grow just as fine.
Mine was totally root bound like that as well all I did was kind of loosen it up because there was no soil even left in there and repotted it into a bigger pot so it can continue to grow
i trimmed mine (roots) then untangled it and placed it in the same pot with fresh sterile medium (because i have no bigger pot!) then I wet the medium with just water to avoid fertiliser burning the open wound, plant is ok 😃 just make sure that your medium is sterile before doing this because i could see that it could lead to disaster if the potting medium has pathogens in it. You could bake the medium or sun it before repotting.
Gently. Very gently.
POT O NOODLES, we making ramen?! r/rootporn would probably love this.
You have several options here- simply place into a new pot surrounded by 1-4 inches of soil on all sides. Do nothing else. This is your easiest option.
You could try to loosen some- I liked what someone else said about using a jet setting on a hose sprayer to remove lots of soil and separate some roots. You could also plot the entire root ball in a big bucket of water for a few hours and see if it loosens up soil and then roots.
You could cut or pull some off- I’ve done that a LOT with pothos and spider plants but I’ve not had to repot my monsteras (yet) so I cannot speak from experience.
Here is MY BIGGEST FEAR for you and your noodle roots: what’s going on in the middle? If you just plop it into new soil without loosening, I worry about root rot in the center of that rootball if it tightens around the center and you haven’t loosened it/cleaned out old soil/added fresh.
Alsoooooo speaking of root rot…if you don’t know, make sure to use an airy potting soil mix. I use miracle grow (left in a hot car to kill gnat eggs if present) and mix with about 1/4-1/3 perlite for my monsteras and aroids. Lava rock is good too and so is that bark I can’t remember the name of lol. You just reeeeeally don’t want a dense, slow draining soil for a monstera.
If you used a dense, slow draining soil on this without unwinding that thing, I’d say it’s certain death to your beautiful plant. So I guess
TLDR use well draining soil…. Or else.
r/wheresthefuckingsoil
Forbidden noodles
It rinse the roots with a hose gently to remove as much old dirt as possible and then up pot with all new dirt.
What’s the best soil for re-potting?
I always use my water hose on jet mode and it has never failed to untangle and simultaneously clean the roots .. never …and I’ve never killed a plant this way either. Most are pretty happy to have roots free from my experience. Hell in horticulture class years ago, we were taught to tear apart the roots on started plants before replanting… Right up the middle.. didn’t kill any of those either… Well not from tearing their roots anyways ..
My mom used to just cut thru them at the very bottom to open it up some make an upside down cone shape in the soil where you are planting it. Open the bound up stuff a bit and place it on the pointy part of the cone, fan it out a bit as gentle as you can then add more soil. Finish all the repotting stuff you usually do. Water it throughly, etc…
It always seemed to work fine for her.
Monstera Deliciosa is extremely strong and resilient and is totally happy with up-potting into a bigger container with no extra work needed.
I repotted my monstera a few months ago and roots looked like that. I tried to gently untangle most of them and it caused a bunch of leaves to fall off and turn brown at the edges. If I were to do it again I would not try to untangle so much and just plop it into a big pot like so many others are saying here! Learn from my mistakes 🙁
i had similar roots, i had to break them up because i had mealybugs in the roots.
i just alternated between spraying with a hose on high pressure and trying to break them up with my fingers. it took a few minutes and definitely tore some snaller roots but its doable.