| House plants need to be pruned, not only above | | | | returnthe plant to the pot and put new soil around |
| the soil, butbelow as well. Once a plant is as large | | | | the roots. |
| as you would like, thesoil around the roots needs | | | | You will have to prune the stems some when the |
| to be renewed from time to time. | | | | plant is back inthe pot. It will help keep the plant |
| Cutting back the roots is the only way to do this | | | | proportional to the size ofthe container. At this |
| withouttransplanting the plant. | | | | point, you are just trying to keep theplant healthy |
| Root pruning for some plants needs to be done | | | | and beautiful, not have it grow more. |
| every year, and othersonly need pruning once | | | | Pruning techniques are the same indoors as |
| every few years. You can test to see ifpruning is | | | | outdoors, the onlydifference being that you prune |
| needed by taking the plant out of the pot and | | | | more extremely indoors due tosize constraints. |
| lookingat the roots. If they are matted in a ball, | | | | You should shorten stems and pinch out thetips |
| you need to prunethem. Also, if you see roots | | | | of growing shoots where you want branches to |
| coming out the bottom of the pot,it is time to | | | | be. Where youdo not want branching, cut away |
| prune. | | | | entire stems at their bases. |
| To prune, you can either pull the roots out of the | | | | When the whole stem is removed, it hardly ever |
| matted balland spread them out, shorten the | | | | grown back. Ifyou want to shorten an indoor |
| roots themselves by cuttingthem, or slice the | | | | tree, shorten the major limbs andside branches, |
| root ball apart with a knife. Loosen the restof the | | | | just like you would do outdoors. |
| roots after slicing the ball apart. You can now | | | | |