I Have an 8′ schefflura. Single trunk..
I want to root the top 3-4 feet of the plant. It is bushy and healthy.
How fo I go about it
Hello,
We very recently answered a question for you about your Schefflera under the title Shortening an 8′ Schefflera.
However, it appears we may have misunderstood your question to be about pruning your Schefflera down to 3-4ft. when what you were asking about was cutting off and propagating the top half of your plant into a new plant (and perhaps discarding the bottom half? Instead of discarding the lower half you could review our previous answer about trying to get new growth from the bottom).
Plants are generally propagated by cutting stems and placing them in water or in soil. I’ve included some links below about propagation generally, and about propagating Schefflera in particular.
Rooting in water can sometimes lead to weak or brittle roots whereas roots that have had to push through a heavier medium like soil are usually tougher. When rooting in soil, dipping the cuttings in a rooting hormone (available at gardening centres) speeds up the process. In most cases – and with both water and soil – the lower leaves of the stems are removed, leaving just a few leaves at the top. This allows the stem to devote its resources to putting out roots rather than maintaining leaves.
If you simply cut off the top half of your plant, you may find that the healthy bushy top you’re trying to root loses many of its leaves and becomes spindly because the plant cannot support those leaves while trying to develop roots.
However, there is another method you can use called “air layering,” which allows you to try to grow a “daughter” plant that is still attached to the mother plant. This would be much less risky. See this method for Schefflera and others here: Air Layering: Taking Big Houseplants Down a Notch [Laidback Gardener]
Lee Valley sells a set of rooter pots for air layering (and provides instructions on how to use them) that it claims might be easier to use than the method described above, although the process is similar. Please note that we are simply providing information; we do not endorse any products or services.
If successful, air layering is said to produce a bigger plant in a much shorter time than the stem cuttings method.
Note that if you use either air layering method, you should buy as small a bag of spaghnum or peat moss as you can. Peat and spaghnum mosses are not really the renewable resources some suggest they are. You can read more about this here: 4 Reasons to Stop Using Peat Moss & 7 Sustainable Alternatives [Rural Sprout]
Good luck with propagating your Schefflera!