This is what the whole plant looks like. Sorry that it's sideways.

That's what we call a root rhizome becoming a new stock. It will have lots of leaves in it also. Your plant is a Sansevieria trifasciata Laurentii.
Stush

Cool, thanks. Is it connected to the main plant underneath the soil somewhere?

Do you use a meter for yours? Do you think I should water it eventually with those readings, the top of the soil looks bone dry.

It's in a air conditioned apartment in a balcony window facing north with very indirect light and I am using just normal indoor potting soil that probably is maintaining a lot of moisture.

With some potting soil, it is dry at the top and wet down below. I don't use a meter. I would suggest potting soil with a little perlite to increase drainage. I would bottom water if possible. Never let it stand in water. Could you put it outside durning summer?
Stush

Yes, it's connected to the mama. Flowers come up in the middle of a rosette of leaves, for future reference.

If leave it in potting soil, should I water it even if the bottom still has moisture like the meter reads? Or will the plant just keep feeding off of that moisture and eventually it will dry up? Its' been well over a month now since I last watered it.

I am not sure I want to repot it if it's not necessary and it has a new shoot.

Better than a meter stick your finger in teh soil and feel if it is moist or dry. A month seems like too long a time to still be wet but that depends on the soil, sun, wartmth, rootmass etc etc.

Sorry to tell you this, but it's going to be necessary sooner or later as that very peaty mix is going to be trouble eventually. Either it'll hold too much water & rot the plant's roots, or become so dry that it won't reabsorb water.

That's why we suggest avoiding peat, that look like mostly what that is. If that pot doesn't have a drainage hole it's just a question of time.

Even if it does, that mix is not good for these plants. If that were mine, I'd unpot, add at least 25% perlite, even 50% would be OK, to that mix, stir it all up & then replace in same pot. I'd wait several days after repotting to water.

By the way, these are not high light plants, you're the first I've heard grow them under lights.

Sorry, I don't know why the leaves are spreading outward like that.

Use a pencil or a chopstick to check for moisture, forget meters. Stick pencil or chopstick ALL THE WAY DOWN IN THE MIX & lift it back out. If there's soil on it or feels moist to the touch, there's still moisture down there, so don't water. It's important to tell whether there's moisture wayyyy down below, not just the top couple of inches.

Repotting won't hurt your plant, usually makes them more happy. When/if you repot, don't pack the soil tightly in the pot, this forces the air out, increasing the risk of rotting the roots. Roots need oxygen and moisture at the same time to function.

This same Sans as your pic and the other ones I have enjoy being in several hours of direct afternoon Alabama sun, though the ones with yellow on the leaves are slower to acclimate to it when they come out of the house in the spring. Less light = slower growth and moisture usage. Are you permitted to have plants on the deck?

Is there anything you have to be careful about as far as the new shoot if I repot?

It's normal indoor potting soil from the local garden center. It might look more extreme in the picture because it's a close up and it was after not watering it for a month so it got very dry.

I finally watered it last week and it seems to be doing well still. The soil was so dry on the top I could hear the water just pouring thru the whole pot.

There is a drainage hole. I do suspect that the soil on the bottom will never completely dry but I am hoping that if I am careful not to overwater that it will be okay for this season at least.

I don't know where someone got the idea that I was using lights? It's in window that has very low lights and no direct sunlight to speak of.

When you pull the plant out of the pot, the soil should fall away and you'll see how the baby is connected to the mama. As far as caution goes, be careful about bending the tips since that can make a brown crease line, or even break a leaf. That won't hurt the plant, but is unsightly later.

Adding perlite to potting soil is one thing people do to combat the soil taking too long to dry. As far as bags of stuff from a store goes, I would recommend cactus/palm soil instead of potting soil when you decide it's time to repot. It's much more chunky and airy, so the risk of rotting roots is much less.

Sorry, I must have read quickly & mistook your (water) meter mention as a light meter reference. I apologize.

My comment about the mix stands, it's not the color we're judging it by, it's the fineness of the particles, rather the lack of larger, particles. We're not trying to give you a hard time, it's that we've learned this through experience (right Purp?).

Was the soil hard to the touch when you watered? That would be the peat hardening & becoming impossible to re-wet. When this happens, often the water runs down the inside of the pot, btwn pot & rootball & we can hear it.

Not much special to watch for when repotting, just be sure to plant it as deep, but not deeper than it was originally, that does matter.

Few of us use meters, they can be unreliable; some use the stick method I referred to above, but as one becomes more experienced, one learns the feel of the difference in weight, btwn how heavy the pot feels when dry, vs. how heavy it feels when wet.

Yes, the info is shared in the hopes that no more Sans will die from "overwatering" which is the catch-all phrase for rotting/suffocating roots. It's not as much about how much water is applied, but about the amount of air in the soil when it is moist. Roots need oxygen and moisture at the same time to function. If there is only moisture, rot is almost certain. If roots get too dry, they shrivel and die. The latter is rarely a factor in the death of Sans since they are much more capable of handling dry periods than most potted plants, but mentioning it because the cycle of too dry, then too wet, is extremely stressful for potted plants in general, even Sans.

Tiny particles in a pot lodge into all of the tiny spaces, eliminating the air. Using larger particles is the key, though adding them to something with smaller particles is still not ideal. NOT packing 'soil' tightly into containers also helps immensely. I use the same soil for all of my plants, from ferns to cacti. This allows me to keep the ones who like to be moist, moist, without rotting them, and prevents rot when drysters like cacti do need a drink.

For storebought, that called cactus/palm soil seems to be decent. There are many options, even among those who agree on the particle principle, so it's just a matter of trial and error to find something you like. There are also 'recipes' for mixes called gritty mix, and 5-1-1. These are recommended by very knowledgeable people who have tons of excellent plants. You can find discussions about these make-yourself mixes on container and house plant forums.

This is what the shoot looks like today after a summer of growing. It's the one with the curved leaf pointing toward the window.

I wonder if it will eventually straighten out after it's given enough time?

And when you have these indoors, is there really a "growing season" where it will stop growing? I just noticed a new "pup" today, and it's October 7th.

Here is the new pup, just noticed on October 7th.

Will this keep growing thru the winter or will it stop and maybe start up more later?

I have only been watering this plant about once a month due to the bad soil I have in it, and I currently have it at a window where it gets indirect light (lots of trees in the way).

In the winter I am thinking of moving it away from the window though because it can get really drafty near there unless I cover the window with plastic.

I am completely new to indoor plants so I don't know how the growing season works for them. Do leaves stop halfway grown and then continue in the spring magically, or do they just stay the way they are if they don't make it to full size during the growing season? How does the plant know it's growing season when it's indoors?

Thanks.

Yes, the warmer, longer days of summer do cause plants to grow faster. When there's less light, colder temps, growth can slow, or even stall. The various conditions in individual houses can vary vastly, so a specific prediction isn't really possible, except for those who are repeating experiences from previous years in the same conditions, with the same plants.

I can't tell from this pic if your plant is in peaty potting soil, or coirpeat. If the latter, it doesn't seem like bad stuff for a Sans at all. Is it packed into a solid ball, or can you easily shuffle the particles around?

I believe the one leaf is leaning toward the window because that's where the light is coming from. Rotating your plant once every week or 2 should help keep it it as upright as possible. When a plant with upright leaves like this needs more light, the natural response is to move its' leaves toward the light, and to a horizontal position if necessary, exposing more of the top leaf surface to the light.

Since the last part of soil to dry is at the bottom, sticking your fingers in a few inches won't tell you what you need to know. As long as your plant isn't too heavy to pick up, picking it up is the best indicator of the moisture level. When still heavy, it's still moist. When the moisture has evaporated, it will feel much lighter. To get your benchmark, pick it up after watering. This is something I do every time because I take plants to a sink or shower to water them, so the excess water can flow out of the pot without making a mess. When it's stopped dripping enough to be carried through the house, I do. Tilting the pot toward a drain hole can help make sure it's not going to keep slowly seeping a lot more water into a drain saucer/tray. Even after years of doing it, I'm always surprised at how much more water comes out when I do that.

This plant can grow to 4 feet or more. I used tomato cages on mine to keep all the leaves inside. Makes it easiier to move about also.

Another pup came up! This time right up against the edge of the pot. When it is time to repot this whole thing I wonder if that's going to make it harder? (the shoot that started this post is very close to the edge as well)

purple: The particles seem to be easily moved, at least when they are dry. It's regular store bought potting soil though, I am not sure it's ideal.

I am watering this plant about once a month, I think it does take quite that long for the soil in the bottom of the pot to dry. And now that winter is coming even with the shoots I am afraid of overwatering it someday as I imagine it's going to take longer to dry out.

What if I didn't water it all winter or just barely water it with these shoots? Would they just chill out and start growing more in the spring?

Sansevieria are supposed to be summer-dormant plants, i.e., they do most of their growing in fall, spring, and winter as an adaptation to the harsh summer conditions in their native habitat. Changes in day or night length are the normal triggers to go in or out of dormancy (and to flower, etc.)

However, despite this scientific fact, I read a lot about people's Sans growing the most during the summer (or at least spring and fall). My hypothesis is that cool in-home temperatures slow down the chemical reactions and biological processes of heat-loving Sans so much that they are unable to grow during their normal, natural growing period when kept as potted house plants, and that's why so many people report the greatest growth during the warmer months of the year.

A rhizome is just an underground stem. Pups are just leaves on an underground stem, or new "branch", so that's how you can treat them. With most Sans, the whole plant is underground except the leaves.

You might be able to deal with the water-retentive media by watering with a high pressure squirt bottle. Some people here are going to hiss at me, but it's a "cheater's" method for keeping moisture-intolerant plants healthy in water-retentive soil. I've kept plants that way for years. Get a squirt bottle or squirt gun with a very strong single stream (those squirt ends for outdoor herbacides and pesticides are good - cleaned WELL of course). Place the tip on the soil, point it down toward the roots, and fire. Do it all around the plant so there are roughly evenly spaced wet streaks in the otherwise pretty dry soil. If the stream is good enough, it'll squirt several inches into the medium. This prevents the dreaded "perched water" near the bottom of the pot where rot usually starts. In media like peat, those wet streaks inside the pot disperse into damp columns. If you pay attention, you can alter your shots each watering so you do dampen almost all the soil over several weeks so it is never all wet at the same time, but every part gets damp at different times. It is an excellent method for the hopeless over-waterer who just can't resist the urge to give a plant a drink. You get to mess with your plant all the time without killing it. You can even squirt a little water up through the drain holes, or with plastic pots, you can stick holes in the side with a hot nail just for this purpose. It works. You CAN even over-water with this method, but you're less likely too.

Don't tell on me, but I'm maintaining several plants this way right now.

my snake plant has a random tall double leaves new growth that’s growing so fast it’s drooping it doesnt look like what others are seeing iits like it’s a different plant? has anyone ever seen this?