I’ve had my monstera for nearly 3 months now, and it’s time to seperate the plants as it’s multiple in one pot. However I can’t decide whether to take the two biggest, maturest, plants and put them in a pot that’s big enough for them both, or whether to do 1 plant in 1 pot, I like the bushier look so thinking 2 gives me the best of both worlds. Any advice ?
you can definitely try to make two in one work, but know that monstera are infamous for choking each other. one stem will eventually "win" and outcompete the other one. it can be a long process but it is inevitable. you can always try chopping to see if you can get two growth points to activate! or use keiki paste. separating from the start is the most painless way though, if you put two together and then wait for one to win, you have to untangle their roots from each other, which neither will be happy with 😅😅
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I would put each in its own pot. I waited 2 years and now I have one excellent one that's just okay and one that I had to restart in water. I wish I had given them all their own space sooner.
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Plantgeek is 100% right, separation is best long term because these plants grow extremely robust root systems and one will always do better than the other. When I separated mine, it was 4 in a pot and what I did was put the biggest one right back in the same pot, and then downsized the 3 smaller ones into their own pots. Don’t be afraid to lose 10-60% of the root system as they’ll bounce back after a few weeks. I broke off probably about that 60% level of roots from the biggest one because there was just no other way to separate them than to spend 6+ hours meticulously separating root by root or to just give them a nice firm pull
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They’re not bush plants but the way they’re sold and marketed online makes it seem that way. Separate them earlier rather than later. I had a trio that I repotted in a bigger pot, not separating at around year one or two. 4-5 years later (this summer) I separated and repotted. This was the mangled mess I had to work with. They were all different sizes because like everyone else above said, they start to compete for nutrients even if I added fertilizer. The rocks were in there because they needed something to climb and would topple over otherwise.
