This is not a sad story, This plant was sent when my sister passed four years ago. It has sat on the back porch and is in kinda bad shape. I am going to repot it and raise it up a bit to expose some roots. But first the leaves need to get a little greener and it needs a bit of pruning, like half of it needs to go. I also plan on propagating the cuttings. Schefflera is a plant I have never had so if you have advice on the care and feeding of Umbrella plant please offer it up. That third picture is of a hole where they pruned it before it was sold, there are three places like that. Should I make it healthy before repotting? Can I use Clonex Rooting Compound to propagate the cuttings? I am ignorant of these plants so any and all advice to help this special plant would be great. Thanks, H.
Thank you, I will reread this tomorrow when I am not so tired but it looks like my problem is very easy to fix, water and fertilizer. If you or anyone has advice on getting the cuttings to take root and on the soil for the new pot. My plan right now is maybe 3 parts peat moss, 2 parts planting soil and 1 part sand. I made up that mix from what the soil conditions are supposed to be. Any idea about the hole? Again, Thanks for your time H.
Since a porous medium is called for, consider adding some perlite and/or calcined clay to the mix, with the amount dependent on the initial composition of the soil. Also, additional peat moss and sand may not be needed as many indoor potting soils already contain a large quantity of both. Not sure about the hole. I would probably not do anything about it; the wound appears to have healed over already. If its appearance bothers you perhaps you can make it a home for an air plant.
As it will be in a pot, we got a new one for it because it was still in the plastic delivery pot, I can use regular potting soil? Do you think I should add more perlite? Here in Lake Charles the native soil is heavy clay compared to the sandy stuff where I lived before (Fresno, CA). This will be an indoor and porch plant, if it was going outside I might worry about water in those holes and rot, air plants it is. This afternoon or tomorrow I will get a better picture of the base of the tree and ask about exposing more of the roots and how much I can expose this time. I will also be bugging you about pruning it. I don't want to cut to much off but that one leggy, tall trunk needs to go, I think. It just looks funny and wants to tip over. Thank you, H
I had assumed you would be using sterilized potting soil that's intended to be used for indoor plants. In my area those are typically a mix of peat, sand, perlite an/or small sized lava rock from which other ingredients can to added to come up with the desired medium. I don't think it would be a good idea to use the clay-based, outdoor soil as a starting point as it's not sterilized and would also work against porosity. As for the roots and pruning I'll defer to someone with more experience. Having said that I would also remove the one tall stem. As a matter of curiosity, why do you feel the need to expose more of the roots?
The potting soil I have is sterilized potting soil that we got to repot a small lemon tree that we hope to save. I have watched a few Videos and look at a lot of pictures and read a little about these plants and some folks do that for looks. I like the idea but don't always trust you tube videos and such. I found a picture of one with exposed rots like I want, sorta. Thank you, Junglekeeper. I hadn't touched the plant since it came here 2 days ago. The bottom of the pot was wet but when I went to take close ups it was dry as a bone. After taking the pictures I threw in some potting soil, just a cup, to fertilize it a bit and watered it. These pictures show what I think is a bad binding of roots. At the bottom of the pot there is a lot of fine, almost hair like roots. How much of that can or should be removed?
I wonder if the roots visible on the bonsai are actually air roots that had been encouraged to grow over time rather than subterranean roots that were exposed. Anyway, I would re-moisturize the soil before transplanting the tree. Let it sit in a tray of water for awhile to allow moisture to be absorbed. The hair-like roots are the ones doing much of the work so try keep their damage to a minimum. I would loosen up the roots on the outside before repotting although some might opt to prune away a portion of the root mass. Again I defer to someone with more experience on the matter.
Thank you, I did, I gave it a good drink and am not planning to do anything until the weather warms up a bit. Might be a week before that happens. It does have a few air roots hanging down into the soil, pretty cool really. There was one youtube video ( it was on the internet so you know it's true, right?) where he just cut off the bottom inch or two of a root pod that was a foot deep. Not sure I would want to do that but looking at the root of this plant makes me want to do something for it. At the very least I will get it go and wet and massage the roots to loosen them up. Thanks again, H.
