When pruning houseplants, it is essential to use clean or sterile shears and avoid cutting more than 30 of the root mass. Regular watering and fertilizing are crucial for maintaining the health and growth of your greenery. If your indoor jungle is overgrown, it might be time to prune your plants. Pruning involves thinning, deadheading and removing leaves, cutting back leggy growth, pinching, shaping, promoting lateral growth, and revival pruning.
Observe the plant’s structure and shape, determine your tools, remove dead matter, deadhead the plant, and make your cuts just above a node. Trim either directly below a leaf or occasionally pinch off new growth with your fingers to get your plant to sprout new vining stems off of it.
Pruning is easy: cut stems back to any height where new growth will start to emerge and continue growing upward from there. Cut away up to 25 of your stems, vines, or branches. Prune back areas that look overgrown or that you’d like to see some future growth in. Angle your cuttings and trim any exceptionally long, lanky stems by removing a third of their length and snipping just above a node (the point where leaves grow from the plant). As a rule of thumb, prune out no more than a quarter of the foliage at one pruning, and if you’re not sure, don’t cut. It’s best to try to avoid cutting too much of the foliage at one pruning.
📹 5 Quick tips on Pruning indoor plants
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How do you trim a bushy plant?
To improve a poorly pruned shrub, make selective cuts to stimulate new growth and remove injured wood. Cuts heal more quickly when made in the right spot and at the correct angle with a sharp, clean tool. Find a branch with a bud facing the desired direction and prune just above that bud at a 45-degree angle. Leave no more than ¼ inch of growth above the bud to prevent rot. Cutting too low can cause the bud to dry out, and cutting at an angle greater than 45 degrees can create a slow-healing surface area.
Open up the plant with thinning cuts, trimming back branch tips to create dense foliage at the top and weak, leafless branches at the center. Remove the thickest, oldest wood first before moving to younger stems.
How do you trim overgrown houseplants?
When pruning houseplants, it is essential to make the cut above a leaf node to encourage new growth. If removing large stems, cut as close to the main stem or at the base of the plant, if it grows like this. The aim is to achieve a natural look. With a wide range of houseplants available, it is important to keep them from getting out of hand. Judgmental pruning can help correct structural problems and encourage new growth.
Additionally, removing dead leaves and damaged or diseased stems is crucial, as well-maintained plants tend to attract fewer pests and diseases. Overall, judicious pruning is essential to maintain a healthy indoor garden and maintain a beautiful indoor landscape.
How do you prune overgrown houseplants?
When pruning houseplants, it is essential to make the cut above a leaf node to encourage new growth. If removing large stems, cut as close to the main stem or at the base of the plant, if it grows like this. The aim is to achieve a natural look. With a wide range of houseplants available, it is important to keep them from getting out of hand. Judgmental pruning can help correct structural problems and encourage new growth.
Additionally, removing dead leaves and damaged or diseased stems is crucial, as well-maintained plants tend to attract fewer pests and diseases. Overall, judicious pruning is essential to maintain a healthy indoor garden and maintain a beautiful indoor landscape.
How to cut a tall indoor plant?
In order to prune a stem, it is necessary to follow it to the desired location above a node with rootlets growing out. The stem should be cut at an angle, as this is the typical orientation of rootlets emerging from nodes.
How to cut a plant that is too tall?
It is recommended that an upright stem be trimmed just above a growth node. This practice will prevent the stem from quickly gaining height and will promote a fuller appearance. The removal of the growing tip of a stem can facilitate the growth of plants, particularly those that are blooming. This technique may be employed at any time to facilitate plant growth.
How do you support a tall indoor plant?
To stake a plant, drive a stake deep into the soil alongside the plant, using commercial stakes like bamboo or vinyl-coated metal. When staking a potted plant, ensure it is driven all the way to the bottom of the container, as potting mix is less effective. When tying the plant, use a stretchy tie like nylon or special plant ties to prevent injury as the plant grows. Taller plants may require multiple ties at different points along the stems.
What to do when indoor plant gets too tall?
To reduce a plant’s size, one must prune it by cutting back its growth until it reaches the desired size. The use of secateurs facilitates the attainment of neat cuts. It is essential to perform regular pruning, as plants have a natural tendency to reach their full height. The rate of growth is accelerated by exposure to bright light, whereas lower light levels have the opposite effect, resulting in a deceleration of growth. To retard growth, situate the plant in a location that is not adjacent to a window.
How do you fix leggy houseplants?
To achieve a bushy appearance in vining plants, it is essential to prune them and ensure they receive enough light. The solution is to cut and propagate the plant, which will give you a new plant and encourage new growth. Once the cutting is full-rooted, you can plant it back with the original houseplant to make it look nice and full. Use clean pruning shears to take a proper cutting, exposing the node with attached leaves. Place the cutting in water or soil for a few weeks to allow it to establish its root system.
What causes plants to grow tall and spindly?
Etiolation is a condition where a plant has long inter-nodal space between leaves, paleness, weakened or collapsed new growth, and stems due to insufficient light. This occurs when the plant grows taller to absorb more light, causing the stems to elongate, leaves to lose color, and leaf drop. The plant’s energy is focused on growing against gravity and light rather than proper growth and development. To fix etiolation, increase light by moving the plant closer to a window or adding an artificial light source in dark spaces.
The existing elongated foliage will not grow strong again, so prune back any old growth to allow new, healthy growth to develop. This article from The Sill’s team of plant experts aims to inspire confidence in the next generation of plant parents.
What pruning techniques should be avoided?
Pruning a plant can be a complex process that can lead to a vicious cycle of snipping out branches. When a branch is snipped, it stimulates the plant to grow, causing four to six new branches to take its place. This is because removing the tip of the branch also removes the dominant bud, which inhibits the growth of the lower buds. To fix this, make a few large cuts rather than a gazillion smaller cuts. If you’re in a snipping nightmare, allow all the new branches to grow from below the pruning cut.
At the end of the growing season, select the strongest and most vigorous branch and remove all other competing branches back to the trunk or main supporting limb. This will ensure the selected branch has a dominant bud, preventing the lower branches from growing back.
Pruning incorrectly can result in a branch stub sticking out, which is often a sign of improper pruning. Conifers rarely, if ever, recover from pruning. Most new growth on a conifer is derived from buds formed on the previous season’s growth, which expand in early spring to form new growth. Cutting back into older wood beyond where new growth buds are located usually results in a permanent stub, also known as an “eye gouger”, which is always brown and ugly.
How to fix plants that are falling over?
To provide support for the plant, utilize a moss pole within the soil and affix it lightly to the plant. In the event that the pole has reached its maximum capacity, it is recommended that an additional pole be installed. Additionally, bamboo canes and plant clips may be employed. As the plant continues to grow, it may exceed the capacity of its current pot, resulting in a tendency to lean and tip over if the pot is not sufficiently robust.
📹 I Cut My Plant In Half…And This Happened
Decapitating your plant can be one of the best things you do to it and I show you what happened to my plant when I cut it in half.
“Be bold, bite the bullet, and make the cut.” Peter Chan owner/founder of Herons Bonsai, London’s premiere bonsai nursery. It most certainly is a “leap of faith” when making drastically hard pruned cuts, especially when it’s taken so long to grow and, in the case of bonsai, can cost hundreds of dollars. When done INTELLIGENTLY your plant will rejuvenate and become the thriving and enjoyable plant you’ve desired! It’s also good to apply a sealant to the wounds to reduce the loss of sap. Great article my friend, keep it up!
I’ve been binge-watching your articles and I have to say you are probably my favourite “plant YouTuber” so far. There are great websites with great content but, as a “first time plant parent” sometimes the “perfection” they portray makes me feel overwhelmed and discouraged. The “chill” vibe I get with your content makes me quite excited and eager to learn 📖🤓 Looking forward to more content 😊
I did this to a fiddle leaf fig that had reached our ceiling a year or two ago. It only had one LONG stem. I hacked it below the halfway point, then I created cuttings from the top portion. The base has branched and now has a lot of leaves. All the cuttings have formed individual plants. So, now I have a branched main plant, instead of one long stem, and a bunch of baby plants.
before you cut the head off your tree for tilting slightly you might want to consider metal wire for binding it straight. this is done to bonsai to shape them and works just fine. if the stem is too tough you can just bind one end of the plant to the pot and pull it straight. i use this method to get a funny S-shape on my shefflera stem for aestetics.
I’m thinking of doing this to my regular Ficus Elastica. It has two really nice and healthy side stems, but they’re pretty much growing in the same direction. It makes the plant look wonky, and has it leaning quite a lot to that side as well. As a bonus for ‘beheading’ my rubber plant, I can gift my sister or niece with one of the cuttings, perhaps even both of them 😄 Thank you for the article Have a nice weekend everyone
I love your articles. Oh! I wanted to let you know that you informed and encouraged me when I didn’t know what my plant was (the Birken). It’s doing great and putting out another leaf. I’ve had 3 since I’ve owned it. (Since autumn or early winter.) anyway, I just chopped the top off my dragon tree (very young,only about 8 inches tall when I cut it). I’m gambling on it splitting into two tops. I hope I didn’t mess up.
I had to hard prune my lemon lime philodendron because it was actively dying and I couldn’t figure out why. I just love this plant so much, I was pretty disappointed. I ended up cutting off the good parts and planted them. So far it appears the cuttings I saved are doing well and one is showing new growth!
Thanks for this excellent, approachable content! I have a poinsettia (rescued from work after Christmas about five years ago) that has gotten very leggy – too tall and just a few leaves in a bunch at the top. Now having watched your articles, I’m guessing it needs both a root prune and a hard prune. Since it’s May as I’m writing this, I’ll start with the hard prune described in this article and maybe save the root prune until winter rolls around and the plant has had time to recover from the hard prune.
I am very inexperienced. I hard pruned a ficus bonsai (curtain) that I have had for 7 years. I thought it was a goner…. It was perpetually droopy, yellow and when I would water it, the runoff would be red/dark brown (root rot). I cleaned up the roots, cleaned the pot, gave it fresh potting mix and hard pruned it so it looks like a bare dead tree. I had read after I did this that plants need leaves and without leaves plants will die (so I thought). I initially thought I had killed it, as it stayed in that bare state for several weeks. Mind you I did this in February. Right when I nearly gave up hope I saw tiny small green buds (end of March). Those buds quickly turned into freshly green stems and leaves (April). My plant is now bushier and better than ever!
I did the same to mine. But whenever I saw a new branch coming out is not the way I like, I wait until it’s 10″ long and has 3-4 leaves, then I cut it plant it another pot.. I succeeded twice but failed last year as the branch was wilted. Then when my original plants need repotting I also plant the propagated branch( having healthy roots) along side it..
90% of my plants are throne-less so I do the soft pruning using my fingers to pluck or pull back the leaves to break off naturally. I only use the cutting pliers on my periwinkle flowers t use them at my alters. I had noticed they do grow more and are fluffier than those plants I never cut so dramatically. Thank you for your website on to care for our green babies.
A lot of plants can be propagated from cuttings. I did it with a Dracaena marginata “tricolor” several years ago after it had grown to over 3 feet tall. Now I have 2 of them together in the pot. Succulents with stems can be propagated this way too. (You can also propagate some succulents from leaves, but they take years to mature.)
Yesterday I chopped off the top of my money tree, I accidentally overwatered it a few times and it was looking terrible so I decided to propagate the last few healthy leaves in order to save it before it’s too late, but I’m also keeping the leftover stem to see if it’ll regrow anything. Sometimes it’s fun to experiment!
My rubber plant bled so much after I pruned it last year I started to cry I felt guilty, almost like I had hurt it, recently I found a piece of tree trunk in the park and I placed it at the root of the rubber after a while the leaves started turning yellow and falling off, I may have gotten it sick by doing that, so I’m gonna prune it again, following your instructions and hopefully all will be well, I don’t wanna loose my plant…..🌷
I lost all my leaves on my rubber plant last year (thrips) it was just a stick. I cut or should i say slashed just above where all the leaves was and now it has branched out on each one of those cuts with several leaves on each (not one leaf like before). So if you wanted growth further down or the opposite side you could try that method to encourage growth.
I recently had to hard prune the crap out of a marble Pothos that I had in one of my arid terrariums, it clearly didn’t like the dry conditions so it was all saggy. I cut the whole thing into four big cuttings, and got rid of the old roots. I put the cuttings in water and basically restarted the entire plant and so far it’s been doing much better
I just started working as a gardener at a big garden store that also does winter storage for potted tropical and sub-tropical plants. Mostly these come from bars and restaurants that use them simply as decoration for their outdoor seating, and nobody working at those places is employed as a gardener, so watering is all they ever get from their owners. There’s a couple of customers where I’ll be calling the owners to ask we can do some serious downsizing on their plants. I’ve been doing a few deliveries with our delivery drivers, and getting a highly fragile plant through squeezes between houses and garages that are only a third as wide as the plants is just a terrible day at work for everyone involved.
i use to work on a garden in trinidad it was on the mountain. walking in the dirt road i spot a plant, it was about a 1ft tall, it had white on the leave it had a pod, the stem was so solid it felt like wire or steel, i think it it felt like a 1/4 inch steel. i never saw it before, or saw anyone with it, i did see 1 more on a next hill side
A week ago I hard pruned my aglaonema. I didn’t care for properly when I first got it two years ago so it grew up to be very leggy. When I cut the head off, there was still too much stem to leave behind so I chopped off the middle part as well and put it in a tube with perlite just to see what happens. There are no roots yet, but it has green buds all over it! I’m so curious if this stem piece would actually develop into a normal plant. Pretty sure this won’t work on plants with wood-like stems though 😅
After you prune any rubber plant better than keeping it indoor at the brightest spot shift it outdoors in full sun I did the same after pruning my plant It had only 1 long leggy stem so I pruned it,today just today 4 new shoots came from every side😆 after some leaves come shift it in indoors again good idea Tip From (HY Greens LTD)
Thank you for this article.. Would you recommend doing a hard prune for pest reasons? I have a small Birkin Philodendron, and it has thrips unfortunately. I’ve cut off alot of leaves already but now am considering just cutting all the leaves off and leaving just the “stump” and treating the soil with pesticides.. Would this yield a good result?
Hi Mr Shiffield Jennifer from Trinidad do you have any article on the Fiddle Leaf plant and if so can you send the link for me thank you. Great article as usual I love trimming back my plants here in d tropics they do great when pruned especially my roses they love it. Hey yr words are pretty harsh lol some ppl might get scared just by yr words like “decapitate” lol so be careful they never want to prune their plants again 😂 😂. Thanks agqin God bless stay safe stay bless keep smiling
I’ve got a Ficus Lyrata that’s about 20 years old and almost 3m tall. It was rescued from someone in my mom’s office, and while it bounced back, it’s always been tall and spindly and rather off-balance. Do you think a chop like this would work on a significantly older plant? Past cuttings of a branch here and there have spurred some branch and new leaves, but those have pretty exclusively been greener wood. I’d love to reinvigorate and reshape it, but I don’t want to kill it. ETA: of course now I’ve watched the rest of the article and see you also did an older plant. Question stands, though. You haven’t led me astray before, so I think I’m just a little nervy about it 😅
Thank you for all the useful information, I learned so much from you and your articles gave me so much confidence to push my limits 🙏🏽. I just got my first Ficus Elastica Ruby, $5 from a grocery store 😁. So cheap because it was in a very bad shape. I followed your instructions and it thriving uncontrollably 😅. It has 4 stems and the leaves start to overlap. After seeing the results in this article, I might cut the 2 new stems and propagate it. It will be a new experiment for me. Fingers crossed 🤞😄. Again thank you 🙏🏽
How bad can it b before the plant is considered unsaveable, my plant is around 3 weeks old and is very white yellow and starting to lean over ( I bleached it yesterday and it is showing signs of getting better in my opinion ) also gave it some feed ( tomato feed for a tomato plant ) but I’m not fussed if grows fruits or veg or anything at all I’d like to keep it alive just for the experience and sentimental reasons of being one of my first plants from a seed, I have photos of it before the issues got real bad but the signs were there just wish I noticed it first! Anyway the root is mostly brown and doesn’t have any shoots coming off of it the stem is probably white from 2cm down from the top all the leaves are white / yellow and curled downwards and shriveled but is there anything I can do to save it could I possibly top it and cut the leaves to help grow the roots again first before growing as a flower can I cut the root to clean white root and will it continue to grow?
Thanks, that was helpful, especially with your example. I have a ficus elastica that I have had since ’02, it has grown slowly and steadily with 10 stems going in all different directions. It is quite bushy, but getting wide and in the way of some other plants in my bay window. I’ve been considering pruning and propagating the cuttings, but wasn’t sure if I could cut it back to the woody parts. Apparently I can.
My snake plant has become huge. It has gotten so big that it is very hard to manage its maintenance. I’m not sure what to do with it. It is over 9 years old and very sentimental to me. This article has a lot of good advice. I sort of smirk when he demonstrates his tips with small snake plants. I,in no way, think I know more than a professional plant grower. I just would like to see him using a bigger snake plant example.
Cool article thanks! I have a rubber plant although so far I am really happy with how it has turned out with the looks. It’s a little crooked or leaning and it has two branches like the main stem and another stem growing sideways and with big leafs and always new leafs growing somewhere. Anyway this one isn’t that old maybe two years or so but this article was great in terms of if I don’t like the look or if it might grow crooked or weird in the future then cutting will be the option for changing the appearance. BUT anyway I have a question does this work for an olive tree also I have one tree and the size is like standard like those you buy in a store for 20-30 bucks so it’s not too big maybe 50-60 cm in height. But it seems I have pests so the leafs always fall off and and it just look grey. I have tried to get rid of them with oils, showers and manual scraping off the pests. It’s those white lice type things that also creates some white web but don’t really remember their name. Since the pests are in the foliage and branches can I cut the crown or the top like you did with the Ficus to get rid of the pests? Because at this point it looks not nice at all lots of dead leafs, many branches without leafs and only small green leafs on random spots basically. I feel I have really tried to get rid of the lice and soon my option is to get rid of it instead of continue with the hassle and also the fact that it’s in quarantine so I can’t have it anywhere I want without risks of getting pests on other plants.
Hello, I’ve just bought a moisture meter after perusal your articles but none of the plant watering tables I’ve found on the internet seems to be trustworthy. Could you make a article about such topic or prepare your version of the most common plant species table with moisture “It’s watering time” levels ? I think it could be really really helpful to your substribera who are new to moisture meter topic Greetings from Poland 😀
OK, so what about the part that you cut off? Where does that go? Does it go on soil? Does it go in water? I’m assuming just throw it away because that’s not what I will do I know that I can get it to Reuben, so I guess I’ll put it in one of the other. Maybe it doesn’t matter I was surprised you did not touch on that. Curious to know what you do with the other half.
I’m curious if I can do this to a lemon tree. When I bought it, it was looking like a miniature tree, looking great. But after potting in a much larger pot, mostly all the new growth is horizontal (the main stem was cut pretty low and also all the tips of the new branches that grew after) and I don’t have enough space on my balcony. Can I do some king of hard pruning to force new branches to grow vertically?
To avoid leaving a negative comment; the vocabulary of sanitize vs clean is important Cause you mention cleaning the tools but specifically not “sanitizing them” I would think If the goal is to not disease plants then naturally you need to sanitize tools as you move from plant to plant respectively Not trying to criticize like an awhile but it’s critical review non the less
I have an 8’ fiddle, and many of her bottom leaves have dropped, leaving the bottom 20 inches of the trunk bare. The leaves point upward for the top 15-or-so inches. The ones below that point are drooping downwards. Oh, and her trunk bends slightly about midway between those two points. And the top seven leaves are smaller in proportion to the bottom half ones. Based on my description, where would you recommend I prune her? Thanks.
So these rubber plants you cut – can these top shoots be replanted and develop roots? I’m not happy with how leafless my rubber plants stem is halfway up (overwatered from purchase). It has two stems so it might be nice to have the one with roots bounce back while i have two pretty but smaller plants develop new roots
Great content and delivery thanks…After a cold snap in Florida it was either perform the hard prune or throw out the ficus with massive leaves. It is showing signs of growth dont know if they will be leaves or branches. BTW…. fairy soap is truly something a Brit could say and get away with in America well it has a different connotation altogether.
I heard when you grow an avocado tree from seed when it gets a bunch of leaves and about 12 inches to cut everything off from 6 inches up? It took me forever to get this thing to grow and it has leaves about 4-6 and the thought of cutting off everything breaks my heart. Why should we cut it off or should we?
I have a shefflera and when you look at it, its shape is like an ‘L’…. One stem grew out ‘ages ago’ on its side, and i thought ooh cool..keep growing love. But now….now it has this weird shape and is growing all over the place it seams like😆I have been too afraid of doing anything about it and have just let it grow to its own accord… Soooo, how do i go about cutting my deeeeaar and old shefflera?? Any good tips or advice? Thank you 🙏🌱
“Obviously, this is all a little stressful for the plant, much like you’d be stressed if your head was cut off. So we need to reduce this stress as much as possible. And this simply means giving your plant a good drink a couple days before pruning day, so it’s well hydrated.” I think the analogy fell apart somewhere. Not sure though. 😛
I wonder if I could do this to my Ming Aurelia. I have it for many years. The first few years, it was growing very nicely, with deep green leaves and very bushy. It grew to become quite tall. Then one year, suddenly, the leaves started to drop. It has been 10+ years like this now. I always thought it was going to die soon. But, as old leaves kept dropping, young leave kept coming up from the tip of each branch, though the rate not as fast as the ones dropping. I gave it nutrients but didn’t help. Currently, it is very tired looking.
I have a Ponytail Palm that is about 25 years old. There were 2 stalks in one pot. They were both rather identical in appearance. Long and skinny talks with long fronds. I repotted it last winter (January 2023). I recently saw a article of someone cutting the stalk and new fronds popping out all around. After the plant had been repotted for about a month, I cut one off about 2″ above the bulb. At first, I thought I had ruined my plant, as nothing happed for about 3 months! Once the days started to get longer in spring, I noticed little bumps around the stalk just under the cut. Now there are 6 bumps! The stalk is barely under 1 inch in diameter, so I don’t know how many of those bumps will actually keep growing. Right now, there is one that has sprouted fronds. I also read that you can’t root the top part that was cut off. Well, I thought there was nothing to lose, so I stuck it in some water and after about a month to 6 weeks, roots started to appear! I have since planted it and it’s doing great!
I also have a seedling 3 weeks old all the growth is white or very yellow ( root rot I defo over watered ) can I trim the leaves to good green stem? Pretty much cut the stem down to under the growth? I’ve bleached it like I’ve seen on other articles etc and she does look a little better since doing it being a outside plant and I’m in the uk it’s still getting too wet🤦🏼
What about palm tree. Someone gave me a type of palm tree, to be honest I’m not sure what type of palm it is. When I got it the person had shoved it in the corner practically under their couch. So it was sideways. I didn’t have much hope for it, but I put a post in the pot to stand it up. To my amazement it survived. Then I repotted it a couple of years ago. It’s still crooked but at least stands up. Can I cut this tree back to where the stem is straighter? Your help would be greatly appreciated.
My cat knocked over my monstera that I just planted after saving it from root rot & growing new roots from a propagated portion of it. I was so proud I successfully saved it & propagated new, healthy roots! The monstera essentially snapped in half, leaving its new & freshly repotted roots separated from its leaves. I left the stump in the soil, hoping the healthy roots will mean more leaves will shoot up eventually. I also took the leaves portion to propagate once again. I hope this works! I was very upset that this accident happened. I have not been having the best luck with what started as my one monstera plant. I do have a healthy version still from the first propagation after the original plant got root rot. So if these parts of the snapped plant live, I will have three little monstera plants instead of the one big one I began with. I love monsteras, so I don’t mind them duplicating on me, but I feel like it will be ages before I have the growth I desire on any of them. I found your article & am relieved to see ot might work, even if I have to wait until spring to see results. I’m keep watering Stumpy in the mean time 🥲