Pruning your houseplants: Why you shouldn't be afraid to do it
Pruning your houseplants is often a scary experience for beginning plant owners. In this guide, we'll discover why you don't have to be afraid to prune your plants and why pruning is actually good for your plant's health.
Pruning your houseplants, cutting off stems and leaves, is a scary experience if you're new to taking care of plants. Will it harm the plant? Will it kill the plant? It seems very harmful to cut stems and leaves off your plants, but this guide will help you understand why pruning is actually good for your plants!
In this plant care guide, we're going to look at a few things that are relevant to pruning your houseplants:
- Pruning your houseplants is not harmful
- Reasons you should prune your plant
- Prune your plant when you notice root rot
- Prune your plant to promote growth
- Prevent pests from getting to your plant
- Prune your plant with care
- Give your plant time to recover after pruning
- What should I do immediately after I prune my plant?
- How can I help my plant heal after pruning?
- How do I know when my plant needs to be pruned?
- What are the different types of pruning?
- What tools do I need for pruning a houseplant?
- Common mistakes people make when pruning
- Conclusion
This guide is meant for two things: inform you about pruning your plants as a beginning plant owner and to make you feel better about pruning your plants.
Let's dive right in and learn more about cutting stems and leaves off your plant, and see what pruning your houseplants is all about.
Pruning your houseplants is not harmful
Pruning your houseplants, and plants in general, is not harmful to them. It's a scary thought, especially in the beginning, to just cut part of your plant off. Luckily, plants aren't the same as humans and animals, cutting a part off doesn't harm them. Plants are very good at repairing themselves and they will always want to grow new roots, stems, and leaves.
When you prune your plant, you can often propagate the cuttings to grow a new plant. If you've ever followed a propagation guide before, you already have some experience with pruning. If everything went well, you'll notice that the parent plant and the cutting are both doing just fine.
So why would or should you prune you plants? Let's find out in the next section!
Reasons you should prune your plant
There are a few reasons why you want to prune your plant. Sometimes pruning your plant is necessary to help it recover or survive a pest.
Other times, pruning your plants has a different reason: you want to promote growth.
Let's look at a few reasons to prune your plant.
Prune your plant when you notice root rot
Sometimes it's necessary to prune your plant, when you've discovered root rot and want to give your plant a fighting chance to recover.
When you've noticed that your plant has root rot, you'll need to cut away the rotting roots. By pruning these roots, you prevent the root rot from spreading to healthy roots.
At the same time, it's good to also prune a few stems and leaves off your plant when it's suffering from root rot. It's good to prune these stems and leaves, because they all need energy and nutrients. When half of the roots are suffering from root rot, your plant can't absorb enough nutrients and moisture from the soil to feed your plant. By pruning your plant back, you're making sure that the part of the plant that is still healthy gets enough nutrients to recover.
Prune your plant to promote growth
As we've discovered in the last paragraph, one of the reasons to prune a houseplant is to make it use less energy and nutrients.
This is great when you want to help your plant recover from a pest, but it's also great for promoting growth.
When you cut away a stem, your plant still has the same nutrients but needs to feed a smaller plant than before. When a plant has too many nutrients, it can focus on growing instead of just surviving. A few good stems and leaves to prune from your plant are stems and leaves that are either dying or "just don't look good".
Pruning your plant isn't harmful, so it's no problem to prune leaves that make your plant look bad. Your plant instantly looks better after pruning less-than-optimal leaves and you're helping your plant grow new stems and leaves!
Prevent pests from getting to your plant
Pests love death and decay. They're attracted to it and will live and breed in it, because there is a lot of food for them there. When you know this, you can outsmart the pests that want to live in or around your plants.
When you start to notice that leaves are dropping, turning another color or just don't look great, you can choose to prune those leaves.
By pruning these stems or leaves before they decay, you're not giving pests a chance to settle in or around your plants. When you've pruned these stems and leaves, you've also given your plant some extra nutrients to grow new leaves and/or heal itself.
Prune your plant with care
So far, we've discovered that pruning your plant, cutting off stems and leaves, is often a good thing for your plant. In case you're still not sure about pruning your plants, let's list all of the benefits that we've gone over in this guide:
- Pruning dead stems/leaves keeps pests away
- Pruning gives energy back to the plant to recover or focus on growth
- Pruning rotting roots helps to keep healthy roots healthy
- Pruning instantly makes your plant look better and healthier
- Most importantly: pruning doesn't harm your plant
There are almost only good things that come from pruning your plants. But, before you go and prune all of your plants, let's go over one downside first.
Give your plant time to recover after pruning
Pruning your plant isn't harmful, as long as you give it enough time to recover. The "time to recover" differs quite a bit for each plant and some plants don't need to recover as much. Most plants don't need to recover from pruning very much and are fine after a few hours. But some plants, will need a few days to recover before you can prune again.
Let's go over the most important type of plant that needs more time to recover: vine plants.
Vine plants, like a Pothos, a Philodendron, or a Maranta Prayer plant, need a few days to recover when they're being pruned. These types of plants have very long vines that hold quite a bit of moisture. When you cut these vines, you're creating a "leak" in their vines, through which moisture will escape. It's important that you prune these types of plants very slowly to avoid letting the plant dry out completely.
A good rule of thumb to use when pruning these types of plants is this: Prune a maximum of 2 vines at a time. Your plant can recover from 2 missing vines quite quickly and it won't harm the plant. When you prune more vines, you risk drying out the vines and this could kill the plant. Your plant is ready to be prune again when the cut vines no longer leak moisture.
If you're pruning the leaves for these types of plants, you won't have to stick to the maximum of 2 leaves at a time. When you're pruning leaves, not a lot of moisture can escape, so it's fine to prune more.
What should I do immediately after I prune my plant?
After pruning, you'll want to take a step back to admire your pruning work, but it's best to clean up any pruned plant first. Cleaning up is especially important if those leaves/stems/roots are actively rotting, because this attracts pests. By cleaning up the area around your plant, you help to prevent getting pests near your plants.
After cleaning up, check to see if any pruning cuts need to be treated. Many plants heal just fine on their own, but some may need a little help from you. An easy way to "dress" this wound is to take a bit of soil and rub it in the wound. Make sure you wash you hands afterwards, because the sap of your plant could be toxic.
And last, but not least, it's a good idea to wait with watering your plants for a few days. This will give your plant enough time to callus any cuts and start recovering. After the cuts have callused over, you can go back to your previous watering schedule.
How can I help my plant heal after pruning?
So you've pruned your plant and made sure you treated the wounds. Now what?
After pruning, your plant needs to recover and there are a few things you can do to help. Helping your plant recover is all about giving it the right growing conditions. After pruning, you should give your plant plenty of bright (indirect) sunlight. After pruning, the remaining leaves will need enough sunlight to photosynthesize and provide energy to the plant for recovery.
After 2 weeks, your plant will likely have recovered quite a bit and now you can start to fertilize it again. Fertilizing before this moment could stress your plant out and that will prevent it from recovering. I prefer using a water-soluble fertilizer, because you can add them to the water you use to water your plant. It's very convenient. Whichever fertilizer you decide to use, make sure to follow the instructions on the label closely. This will prevent over-fertilization.
How do I know when my plant needs to be pruned?
Now that we've covered the benefits of pruning, let's talk about how you can tell when your plant needs some attention. Being able to recognize the signs is essential for keeping your plants healthy and vibrant.
There are a few signs that it might be time for you to prune your plant:
- Your plant has become leggy, with long stems and sparse leaves
- The growth on your plant seems unbalanced or very dense
- There are discolored leaves on your plant
Especially that last point is important, because discolored leaves could mean something is wrong and if you don't prune them, the issues can worsen and affect the entire plant.
Specific signs for different plants that need pruning
There are many different plants that all work a little different. So, it's no surprise that different plants show they need pruning a little different either. Let's look at some of these differences.
For flowering plants, it's time to prune if you see any dead flowers. When you remove these dead flowers, called "deadheading", you give your flowering plant a chance to grow new flowers during the growing season. You can also prune your flowering plant if it's getting too large for the available space.
Leafy plants will tell you they need pruning when they become overly bushy or when the lower leaves start to yellow and drop off. This is a sign of overcrowding, but could also mean it's not getting enough sunlight. If you don't want to prune your plant yet, try to give it some extra sunlight and see how it reacts.
For succulents, the signs are a little more difficult to spot, because these plants grow quite slowly. If your succulent begins to stretch out or appear leggy, it may be reaching for more light. This stretching won't go backwards if you give your succulent a brighter spot, so you can propagate the succulent to give it another try.
With shrubs or larger houseplants, such as ficus or monstera, be on the lookout for uneven growth and lower leaves that are discoloring.
What are the different types of pruning?
It might be a bit of a surprise, but there are different types of pruning and each of them has a specific purpose. The different types we'll look at here are: cleaning, shaping, and thinning.
Cleaning
Cleaning means to remove dead, damaged, or diseased branches and leaves to prevent the spread of disease and promote healthy growth. This is usually the first step in any pruning session, because it helps you to get a clearer picture of what your plant is actively growing.
You can, or rather should, clean your plant using this method during the whole year. Remove dead or dying stems, leaves, or roots as soon as you notice them to keep your plant healthy.
Shaping
Shaping, on the other hand, focuses on making the plant look like you want it to. This is very obvious when pruning a bonsai tree, for example. You're looking for a specific look in your plant and trim leaves and branches to get your plant to look like what you want. This might mean trimming back overgrown branches to encourage a bushier appearance or removing unwanted growth.
When you're shaping your plant, it's usually best to only do this during the active growing season in spring and summer. When you're shaping, you're usually removing a bit more of the plant than normal and your plant can heal from this more quickly in spring and summer.
Thinning
Thinning is type of pruning that means to remove branches to increase air circulation and getting the light to reach all of your plant. Thinning is especially important for very dense, leafy plants that may become overcrowded and suffer from poor airflow. A great example of where thinning is NOT done is a hedge. When you trim them, you'll notice that a hedge is almost hollow, because no light can get through the thick outer layer of leaves. Thinning helps to prevent this effect for your houseplants.
Thinning is something you should do in the late winter or early spring, just before the growing season starts. During the growing season, pests become more active again and the extra air circulation the thinning brings helps to prevent them getting to your plant.
What tools do I need for pruning a houseplant?
Having the right tools is essential for effective pruning of your houseplants. The most important tool is a good pair of pruning shears or scissors. Choose a pair that feels comfortable in your hand and can easily cut through smaller branches and stems.
It's also a good idea to use gloves to protect your hands, and keep a cloth handy to clean your tools after each use. It's important to regularly clean your tools to prevents sap and debris from building up and it helps stop the spread of pests and diseases.
To take your pruning routine up a notch, consider having a spray bottle with a sanitizing solution to disinfect your tools between plants. This will keep your plants healthy and thriving!
Another easy way to keep your tools clean is to use soapy water and a cloth or sponge. Make sure to wipe down the handles as well, as they can get slippery with sap or dirt. Once the tools are clean, dry them thoroughly to prevent any rusting, especially if they have metal components.
Common mistakes people make when pruning
Pruning is fairly straightforward, but there are some mistakes you can make that could harm your plant. Let's briefly look at some mistakes to avoid:
- Pruning at the wrong time of the year
- Over-pruning
- Using dull or dirty tools
- Pruning too late
- Not considering how your plant grows
After pruning, your plant needs time to heal and it can't really heal too well during the fall and winter, so you should wait for spring or summer to do the larger pruning jobs. The same goes for over-pruning. If you prune too much, you plant might get stressed out, because it can't heal quickly enough to stay healthy. And using dull tools usually cause jagged cuts on your plant, which take more effort to heal and could get infection more easily. So use clean, sharp tools to prune your plants.
Another easy mistake is pruning your plant too late. For example, if your plant has dead or dying leaves, and you leave these on the plant for too long, could become a magnet for pests. You should remove these dead and dying leaves as soon as you see them, because this really helps to control pests.
And last, but not least, is pruning your plant without a proper plan. For example, you start pruning your plant under a node, rather than above the node on a branch. Nodes are thicker parts of a stem where leaves grow out of, so if you cut these off the branch that stays on the plant, you'll create random "bare" branches on your plant. Instead, cut above a node, so new growth can start from the node that is still on the plant. This will create a nice, bushy appearance.
Conclusion
Pruning your plant for the first time can be scary, because it feels wrong to cut off parts of your plant. But you don't have to worry about hurting your plant when you're pruning.
In this plant care guide, we've seen that pruning your plant is not harmful and can actually help it grow and survive. Pruning can give your plant some extra energy to grow new leaves, fight off pests, or recover from root rot.
If you want to prune your plant, but you're not sure which leaves or stems are good to prune, start with the ugly looking leaves. This way, your plant will instantly look better and has extra energy to grow new leaves!
Thank you for reading this post! I hope it helps you to keep your plants healthy and beautiful! If you're looking for more guides on specific plants, you can always request a plant guide to get a guide for the plant you have trouble with.
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