A note on names: In scientific circles, Snake Plants are now considered part of the Dracaena genus, and the name Sansevieria has been retired. However, many people still know these plants by their former name, so we’ll sometimes refer to them as Sansevierias. We have an article on the subject here.
Start your Snake Plant’s care off on the right foot by rooting it in the right potting mix. The soil environment has a huge impact on how easily a plant can absorb the water and nutrients that it needs to thrive. But far too many growers wind up damaging their plants by choosing unsuitable soils. Read on to learn what type of soil will help your Snake Plant flourish.
Your Snake Plant will do best in a mix composed mainly of large-particle ingredients like perlite and chunks of bark. Adding a small amount of spongy organic matter will help provide nutrition and reduce the risk of underwatering, but you should limit this to ¼-⅓ of the total volume.
If you want the convenience of a store-bought potting mix, you should generally pick one that’s formulated for succulents. If you prefer to blend your own, remember to include a hefty portion of coarse components to ensure adequate drainage. It may take a few tries to find exactly the right soil mix for your Snake Plant, but experimentation is part of the fun of houseplant care!
Soil or Potting Mix?
We should get our terminology straight before we continue, because the word “soil” can mean different things to different people. To the average houseplant owner, it just means the crumbly stuff in the pot that holds a plant’s roots. But to a botanist, soil refers to the natural substrate from which outdoor plants grow, a complex blend of minerals, microorganisms, and decaying organic matter.
There are usually far fewer ingredients in the kind of potting mix that comes in big bags at your local garden center. That kind of “soil” is a blend of things like peat moss, volcanic glass, and ground-up kelp. Houseplant owners like these mixes because they’re fluffier and easier to keep aerated than garden soil, and they’re sterilized to keep out unwanted microbes, pests, and weeds.
In this article, we’ll use the word “soil” as a catch-all term for “growing medium”, but be aware that you’re better off using a soilless potting mix for your Snake Plant.
What Types of Soil Do Snake Plants Like?
As you can probably guess from their thick, flat leaves, Sansevierias are succulents. Their native habitats are hot and arid regions of West and Central Africa. Their fleshy foliage is a water-storage mechanism that helps them survive through long droughts.
That means you don’t usually need to worry about your Snake Plant getting too thirsty. It’s far more likely to die from an excess of water. When the soil gets too soggy, the roots can’t breathe, which restricts their ability to take up nutrients and moisture. This also weakens their natural defenses, leaving them susceptible to infection.
That’s bad news because infectious fungi and bacteria love swampy, sludgy soil. They’ll breed like crazy in an overwatered pot, and before long, they can start colonizing your Snake Plant’s vulnerable roots. Houseplant owners call this problem root rot. If you don’t spot it and treat it quickly, it’s a death sentence for your plant.
All this means that your Snake Plant will be happiest in soil that doesn’t retain much water. You want most of the moisture in the pot to drain away or evaporate within the first few hours after each watering. That will significantly reduce the risk of root rot.
Note that there is a trade-off here: your Snake Plant does need some hydration to survive, and faster drainage means you’ll need to water it more often.
You’ll need to fertilize, too. Plants in the wild get most of their nutrients from the decomposing scraps of other living things – but these organic materials tend to trap and hold moisture. This means that fast-draining soils are often low in nutrition, requiring you to supplement your Snake Plant’s diet.
Soil pH is another concern, but it’s a relatively minor one. Snake Plants do best in a slightly acidic growing medium. Their acceptable pH range is pretty wide, though, stretching from 4.5 to 8.5. Unless you’re doing something really weird, it’s unlikely that your soil will be too acidic or too basic for a Sansevieria.
Potting Mix Components for Snake Plants
To make the right potting mix for your Snake Plant, you’ll need to understand the ingredients that go into it. We can sort them into two broad categories.
First up are the coarse, chunky elements. These are either minerals or dense, woody materials that will take a while to decompose. The point of these ingredients is to provide the structure that keeps your mix aerated and allows water to flow through, so you don’t want them to break down quickly. Examples include:
- Perlite. You’ll find this volcanic glass in almost every commercial potting mix on the market. Its properties are very useful for houseplant growers – it’s grainy enough to let water drain away, but it’s also porous and can store a bit of moisture to keep the roots from totally drying out between waterings. Perlite comes in several different grades, but for Snake Plants, you should use #3 perlite, which is nice and coarse.
- Pumice. This is another type of volcanic silicate. Horticultural pumice requires less processing than perlite, so it’s arguably a bit more eco-friendly, but it’s more expensive and often harder to find locally. It’s also a little heavier, which may be a good thing for Snake Plant owners – the weight provides a little ballast for these top-heavy plants.
- Lava rock. Good for aeration, but heavier and more water-retentive than pumice. Though it’s usually sold as “lava rock”, the scientific term for this mineral is scoria.
- Pine or fir bark. You want to use the kind of medium-sized bark chips sold as an orchid growing medium. They’re large and sturdy enough to allow for good drainage, and they also lower the overall pH of the mix, which Snake Plants will appreciate.
- Coarse sand. The operative word here is “coarse” – tiny grains of beach sand will be worse than useless for a succulent mix. Even large-grained sand is usually finer than something like pumice or perlite, so you should include some larger elements as well.
Next are the absorbent materials. These elements help to soak up excess water so that it takes longer for the soil to dry out completely. Snake Plants don’t like to be overwatered, but they do prefer a bit more moisture than some succulents, which is why it’s helpful to include some of ingredients from this list in your mix:
- Peat moss. Most store-bought houseplant soils use dried peat moss as their base. It’s quite light and spongy, and it has some antifungal properties. However, there are environmental concerns around peat mining. Peat bogs take centuries to form, and it’s unclear whether they can ever recover from harvesting.
- Coconut coir. Sometimes called coco peat, this is the most popular alternative to peat moss. It’s a waste product of the coconut industry that’s found a niche as a soil component. Coir is quite fluffy and absorbent, but unlike peat moss, it’s pH-neutral and doesn’t suppress fungal growth. Note that coir production isn’t completely green, since the fibers have to be industrially washed and then shipped across the world before gardeners in the US can use them.
- Vermiculite. Like perlite, vermiculite is a porous, silica-based material. However, it’s made of much smaller particles, which makes it much more useful for promoting water retention than for improving drainage. Use it sparingly – too much will make your soil dense and soupy.
- Compost. A catch-all term for organic matter that’s decomposed into a crumbly, earthy-smelling soil additive. Unlike the other items we’ve listed, compost adds nutrition to the potting mix, reducing the need for fertilizer. We usually recommend vermicompost, which helps aerate the soil on a microscopic scale.
Making Your Own Snake Plant Soil
More than half of the ingredients for your Sansevieria mix should be coarse, drainage-enhancing elements like pumice or coarse sand. If you want to add nutrition to the soil, you can add some compost as well – around 5-10% is plenty. The rest of the mix should be something spongy and mostly inert, like coco coir.
Try using 4 parts perlite, 3 parts fir bark, 2 parts coco peat, and 1 part vermicompost. This should give you a very loose and airy mix that drains quite quickly.
You can tweak this recipe depending on your care habits. For instance, if you know you tend to overwater, use a bit less coco coir and a bit more perlite. Do the opposite if you’re the forgetful type and you’re worried your Snake Plant will dry out.
If you don’t include any compost, remember that you’ll need to give your plant some supplemental nutrition. One simple option is to include some slow-release fertilizer in your soil blend and forget about it for 6-12 months – the pellets will slowly break down and release their nutrients bit by bit. Alternatively, provide a bit of liquid fertilizer (we advise using a ½-strength dose at first) every 4-6 weeks during the growing season.
Crumbly minerals like pumice and perlite tend to produce a fair amount of dust, and bags of pine bark chips often include smaller fragments. You may want to rinse or screen these materials before using them, leaving only the bigger chunks to maximize your soil’s drainage. It’s a good idea to use a dust mask and safety goggles when working with perlite, since it often creates a lot of very fine airborne dust.
Mix up your ingredients thoroughly to get an even distribution. Some older guides advise leaving a layer of large rocks or gravel on the bottom of the pot. We don’t recommend this because it tends to push the perched water table – the moisture that can’t flow out of the soil due to electrostatic attraction – higher in the pot. That puts the water closer to your Snake Plant’s roots, where it’s more likely to cause root rot!
Store-Bought Soils for Snake Plants
What if you don’t want to go to the trouble of preparing a custom-made blend? Can you grow a Snake Plant in a premade potting mix that you bought from a garden store?
Yes, you certainly can. Snake Plants are quite hardy, and as long as you care for them properly, they can thrive in a wide range of different soils. You should still try to get a mix with good drainage, as this will make it much easier to water your plant properly. We’d recommend a growing medium designed for cacti and other succulents, like this one.
Some people have reported success growing Sansevierias in an African Violet potting mix. This type of blend will be denser and more water-retentive than a succulent mix, so be very careful about overwatering. We’d only recommend using African Violet soil if you tend to water your plants very infrequently and you want to help your Snake Plant through the thirsty stretches.
You can always compromise and incorporate a bit of store-bought potting soil as one element of your custom potting mix. Commercial substrates are often good sources of nutrients and moisture-wicking elements, which pair well with coarse ingredients that boost the drainage. You should get good results by combining 25% African Violet mix, 25% coco coir, and 50% perlite by volume.
Don’t stress out about getting your soil blend exactly right on the first try. It usually takes a bit of trial and error to find the mix that fits best with your plant, your home, and your care regimen. Luckily, Snake Plants are pretty resilient, and yours should survive the learning process as long you keep a close eye on its health.
The Right Pot for Your Snake Plant
After you’ve gone to the trouble of crafting a delightful soil recipe for your Snake Plant, you don’t want to sabotage your efforts by plopping that potting mix into the wrong pot. Always keep your Sansevieria in a container with drainage holes! Otherwise, the liquid that flows through the potting mix will simply pool at the bottom, and your plant will still be at risk of root rot.
If you happen to find a beautiful container that doesn’t have holes in the base, you can still use it as a cachepot. Put your Snake Plant in a slightly smaller plastic container with drainage holes, then slide that inside the prettier pot. Remember that you’ll need to remove the main pot before watering your Sansevieria, or empty the excess water from the cachepot afterward.
A Snake Plant’s container can be made of pretty much anything – plastic, ceramics, metal, wood, you name it. The only material worth special mention is unglazed terra cotta, which is very porous, allowing water to evaporate through it. Pots made of terra cotta dry out faster than others, making them even more resistant to overwatering. This can be very helpful when raising a drought-tolerant plant like a Sansevieria.
Repotting a Snake Plant
Unless you’re growing your Snake Plant in a mix that only includes inorganic ingredients like pumice and vermiculite, some of the soil will decompose and lose its structure over time. That means it’s helpful to occasionally replace the potting mix.
This isn’t too much of a hassle, since you’ll need to uproot your Snake Plant every few years anyway – either to move it into a larger pot or to trim its roots. You can take advantage of this opportunity to give it some fresh potting mix.
Repot your plant in the early spring. This will give it plenty of time during the growing season to bounce back from the stress of moving. Fill ⅓-½ of the new pot with your soil mix, then tip your Snake Plant out of its old container and clear away the soil from its roots.
If the roots are pot bound – bunched into a tight mass and circling around each other – you should work them gently loose with your fingers and spread them out. Then move it to the new container and fill the soil in gently around the root mass.
Your Snake Plant will be a little delicate after you’ve repotted, so treat it accordingly. Avoid fertilizing or giving too much water, and keep it out of direct sunlight. It should be back to its full strength within a month or two.
Final Thoughts
Providing your Snake Plant with a healthy, fast-draining potting mix will go a long way toward keeping it healthy. The proper substrate will make it much easier to supply plenty of water and fertilizer without putting your plant in danger of root rot. As long as you remember the guidelines above, you should have no trouble choosing a soil that keeps your Snake Plant healthy and happy.