$7 Schefflera Arboricola

palmettopark

Here is one of my new trees Schefflera Arboricola purchased at Wally World here in South Florida. 37 inches high in 10 inch stock pot. Would it be safe to cut this back about twelve inches without cooking it?? Or repot and trim at a later date.

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	tree 001.jpg (72.9 KB, 54 views)
	tree 002.jpg (72.0 KB, 108 views)

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RedPine

Hi park,


If your sceff is healthy then there isnt a problem with whacking it down.Looks like if you get a bunch of aerials going off those trunks,reduce the hieght and widen the canopy you will end up with a darn nice tree.

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palmettopark

Hey Red. Got a lot of ariels going on but very small just wondering how tuff this tree is. Gonna take this one slow. Seen these in 14inch by 2inch deep pots the other day selling for $125 but way more defined than this one (think I can do the same for $7) just thought I'd give it a try. Now for a pot

RedPine

Hi,
If you want to go this way...if not it's cool too.


Scheffs are a hard kill if you havea decent soil.Don't worry about a nice pot yet,as a matter fact I wouldn't do much triming yet either.If you can get a 10-15 gallon grow can and a big bag full of moss. Then repot into the can about 1/2 way down in a well draining soil,then fill the rest of the pot with the moss.Kinda poke it around all the low branches and trunks.Then let it grow for about 6 months like that,when you pull it out and remove all the waste you will have a feast of fat areials growing from evrything.Any of them you dont want?, just remove them and wire the rest and so-forth if needed.Doing this will give you the makings of a nice banyan trunk.Then you can reduce the height and start training the branches down into the famos umbrella shape.It's a pain in the rear but it is working well for me so far.

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palmettopark

Got all the ingrediants already might try that, already got a lot of ariels but can see where this might bring more out. Gonna take my time.

palmettopark

Heres a crude drawing of what I did with this $7 tree. Nice bonsai mix, slow release plant food, superthrive, and moss in a very large well draining plastic pot, a little snip here and there and we'll see what happens. Thanks for the advice.

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jloeschner

Your tree should be fine. I just recently completely defoliated my "big" scheff just a week or so ago, and it is already beginning to fill out again. This is the second defoliation for this tree this year. The first included a very drastic trunk(s) chop. Afterwards, I simply kept it moist and in full sun. It hasn't even slowed down. The summer months are definitely the time to work on these trees.

John

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Little_John

I tend to agree...the two scheff's I've had will stand up to a lot of crap...so trim the $#!t out of it.