House plants need to be pruned, not only above the soil, but below as well. Once a plant is as large as you would like, the soil around the roots needs to be renewed from time to time. Cutting back the roots is the only way to do this without transplanting the plant.
Root pruning for some plants needs to be done every year, and others only need pruning once every few years. You can test to see if pruning is needed by taking the plant out of the pot and looking at the roots. If they are matted in a ball, you need to prune them. Also, if you see roots coming out the bottom of the pot, it is time to prune.
To prune, you can either pull the roots out of the matted ball and spread them out, shorten the roots themselves by cutting them, or slice the root ball apart with a knife. Loosen the rest of the roots after slicing the ball apart. You can now return the plant to the pot and put new soil around the roots.
You will have to prune the stems some when the plant is back in the pot. It will help keep the plant proportional to the size of the container. At this point, you are just trying to keep the plant healthy and beautiful, not have it grow more.
Pruning techniques are the same indoors as outdoors, the only difference being that you prune more extremely indoors due to size constraints. You should shorten stems and pinch out the tips of growing shoots where you want branches to be. Where you do not want branching, cut away entire stems at their bases. When the whole stem is removed, it hardly ever grown back. If you want to shorten an indoor tree, shorten the major limbs and side branches, just like you would do outdoors.
Join Thomas Fryd as he looks at Dracaena marginata care. You can always find new and updated plant and landscape information for homeowners from Thomas at www.Plant-Care.com
Source: www.articlealley.com
