Friday, April 1, 2011

Repotting an Agave

Of all the things the previous occupant of my last apartment left behind, my favourite was a potted Agave.  I've never had much luck with potted plants and never seen much point in plants that aren't useful but the Agave was looked pretty and hardy and was free.  Unfortunately, judging by the pups squeezing their way out from under the parent plant, the Agave needed to be repotted.


This chore scared me in a number of ways.  I have very little experience with repotting plants, so the odds of killing it in the process seemed high.  Furthermore, the Agave is a large, spiny, dense plant so the odds of injuring myself seemed equally high.  So I put it off for a year.

Now that the days are warm again and the Agave has survived my neglect for a whole year, I felt that it deserved some care.  With the help of my wife (who got stabbed instead of me) I've finally done it.


We started by removing the Agave from it's pot.  This took the form of a dangerous tug-of-war, myself gripping the dead leaves around the base while my wife struggled with the pot.  Once freed, it was apparent just how badly root bound the poor plant was.


I carefully began untangling roots, cutting off far more pups than I expected as I came across them.  The pups were attached to the parent plant by way of long ropey looking growths which I mostly cut off and discarded.

In the end I had eighteen pups, removed and potted in plastic ups (with holes in the bottoms, of course).  The Agave returned to it's original pot, it's roots trimmed down by about half.


Will any of these survive being manhandled?  I hope so.  When I feel certain which ones are going to survive, I will make another post here offering them up to any local gardener who cares to claim one.  I certainly don't have a need for so many Agave.

8 comments:

  1. I've been seeing a lot of young Agaves around Chicago these past few months and I've resisted buying one because (if I could manage to keep it alive indoors over the winter) there would come a day when this would happen. Ouch, feel bad for your wife, hope she's ok. At least of the stab (cut?) was bug you could pull off a spiny tip from the Agave and sew your own wound. ;)

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  2. I guess that's another nice thing about living down here, the agave never has to come indoors.
    Unfortunately the plants are all looking pretty terrible right now. I may have killed the whole batch. I'll know for sure in a while, I guess.

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  3. How did the plants go. Did they all survive?

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  4. Hey Dance! I should probably make a dedicated post about this at some point. The parent agave is still suffering. It has some signs of life and I'm hoping it will pull through but maybe not. I think I just trimmed too much root off it. And 5 of the pups have survived and are doing fine. One is already producing pups of it's own!

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  5. I'm about to do the same thing. My two agaves (wingspan 3ft) are in heavy terracotta pots. I'm going to try and tie rope round the neck of each plant and somehow hoist it up - then pull down on the pot. Being on the parapet of my roof doesn't make this any easier. And those spikes are nasty. My wife is not keen to help. Wish me luck.

    As to the pups - leave them for three or four days to harden up before potting on otherwise they are likely to rot.

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    1. Thanks Pincushion! That's good advice that I will keep in mind for next time. Good luck with the repotting. You're brave to try it alone!

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  6. Great blog! I moved to ABQ a year ago and it's a whole new world getting used to the climate and learning about how to keep plants alive here! I'm a bit spoiled coming from southern Cal where you can grow just about anything all year-round.
    By the way, I've been looking for some agaves to plant in my yard. Do you still have a bunch of those pups? If so, can we make a deal?

    Thanks!

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    1. Hey Anon! Welcome to Abq!
      Unfortunately, they all bit the dust this past winter (along with all our houseplants). We had a baby and plants kind of got pushed to the side for 6 months. Oh well.

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