Beginner Gardening: How do you prune a schefflera (umbrella plant)?, 0 by tapla

tapla wrote:
1) You can do minor pruning whenever you have a sharp pair of pruners in your hand, but any radical pruning, which the plant tolerates quite well when healthy, should only be undertaken when the plant IS healthy & is best done in the month before its most robust growth begins, which for you would be any time in June.

2) They aren't particularly sensitive to being resited, but as it is with a high % of woody houseplants plants, might shed some foliage. This is particularly true if they are mover from bright to darker, but the reciprocal can also be true. There is a limit on a leaf's ability to adapt to light. Example: Give light levels numeric values from 1-10 with 1 being very low light. A leaf that emerges under light levels of - say 6, might only be able to adapt to light levels of from 4 or 5 to 8 w/o the plant shedding them. Foliage is generally more able to adapt to increasing light levels than decreasing levels.

I think you're describing 'thinning'. You can thin, but remember that your plant is going into a period where it will lose a considerable amount of its energy reserves (winter), and that removing foliage now inhibits the plants ability to make food (less photosynthesizing surface area). Also, thinning is much more effective in summer when light is better able to penetrate into the tree's center. Thinning and tip pruning after you move the tree outdoors and it has gained energy from the improved conditions magnifies the benefits of thinning by helping the tree to back-bud much more profusely.

3) Cuttings from healthy parent material and taken using a VERY sharp and sterile tool strike faster and at a higher % than those from weak trees. Take 6" cuttings with some of last years wood. Leave 1 or 2 leaves on the cuttings. If you leave 2 leaves, cut the leaflets in half across veins before sticking in a VERY porous medium. A medium that doesn't support any perched water is best. I often use screened and rinsed perlite to root in. Avoid rooting in potting soil. You need to make sure the proximal end (bottom) of the cutting is not covered by a film of water as that can inhibit gas exchange and O2's availability to the cutting.

Alternately, you can take 2-3" inter-nodal branch cuttings (with or without leaves) and lay them on top of the surface of a fast draining potting soil and press them into the soil lightly. Think of how a log looks in the water before a log rolling contest (partially submerged) and you've 'got it'.. Split a gallon milk jug in half so the top can be reunited with the bottom. Put the cuttings on top of soil held in the bottom half & then put the top back on with the cap off. Put this in very bright light, but not direct sun. All should root if the parent material was healthy. See picture below, even though I wasn't using the bottom half in this case.

4) Yes, you can stake this plant if you wish, but if it needs staking it also needs more light or some additional dedication to pruning. I'm not saying that to be critical of you, Ferir. I'm just being the plant's advocate & looking at things from other than the grower's perspective. I understand that to a lot of beginners, pruning & what you can achieve through its practice is something of a mystery.

The biggest favor you can do yourself & the plant would be to gain an understanding of how important soil choice is to your success, the plants level of vitality, and the ease/difficulty with which achieving and maintaining that level of vitality.

Let me know if you wish to discuss anything in more detail.

Al