You could root prune a spider plant with a weed whacker and it would be fine afterwards. Start with those if you're feeling nervous, or have specific worries about being too rough with exposed roots. The steps as I understand it are: Remove plant from pot There's often another step after this, which is 'chop off the base of the pot-shaped rootball'. It's sadly common that you'll see lots of circling roots around the bottom of the pot, and there are several reasons to carve the rootball like a turkey before you do anything else at all. 1. You're quite likely to damage them if you try and untangle them, and then you'll just have to remove them anyway. 2. The thick, relatively unbranching roots are the ones that ferry collected nutrients to the top part of the plant. They don't do much collection themselves, and the woody ones don't do any. In a pot, all they do is take up space. 3. They get in the way when you're trying to take the rest of the soil off, especially if they're woody and have woody corners. 4. They get in the way when you're trying to repot, especially if they're woody and have woody corners. Overall it's a lot of effort for very little return, and takes time you might not have. It's less traumatic all round to lop them off and be done with it. If the plant isn't pot-bound, great. Straight onto the next step. Remove as much of old dirt as possible For this you can use a root rake, a chopstick, a jet of water, or your fingers. Whatever you use, take care not to scratch the skin on the roots. Some species tolerate that more than others, but no species likes it. Cut off dead roots, roots growing in a circle around the pot You can do this as part of the previous step. As you're taking the soil off, remove roots that are circling, dead, heavily damaged, or just plain long. These long roots are more trouble than they're worth, being hard to keep undamaged and requiring their own special space in the new pot. You can also cut off old woody roots that are getting in your way, if they don't have many fine roots at the end. You may need to take off a swathe of old roots near the base anyway, so you can get all the soil out of the very centre of the root ball. You may also need to take off another layer of bound roots, if the plant was previously potted up while rootbound. Cut a slit in the corner of this new rootball, going directly through the bundle of roots, and make as many cuts as you need to get access to the interior of the old pot. Once you're done with that, tidy the roots up. Take off root sections that have a single deep wound / multiple scratches, have ends that curve upwards or back towards the plant, have no fine roots branching off near the end (NB: change where the end is; don't cut the whole root at the base!), or cross over other roots. While it's best to correct all of these problems, at this point you may not have many fine roots left. Take the worst offenders, or the ones that are crowding more desirable roots, or the ones with lots of mass but hardly any fine roots, and leave the rest for next year. Cut wedges out of the root ball (this is the one that makes me really nervous) Not always necessary, and redundant if you're bare-rooting. Bare-rooting (and the subsequent pruning) creates space for new, fine roots by removing unwanted roots and sections of unwanted roots while leaving as much fine rootage as possible. Wedges create space for new roots by bulldozing an area of the existing root system, from the thickest roots down to the thinnest and without regard for whether or not those roots are entirely inside the wedge taken. That's not to say wedges are bad -- while the effect on the worked area is... dramatic, the rest of the roots are left undisturbed. Add gritty or 5-1-1 mix to new similar-sized new pot, or well-cleaned old pot Settle plant in new pot, water thoroughly Do not fertilize for awhile (not sure how long) Fertilise when you start seeing new growth. That means the plant is taking up enough water to do more than keep itself turgid, and you can start making osmosis a little less easy by adding fertiliser salts. How long does that take? Depends on the current health of the plant, the potential vigour of the plant, the time of year, and the conditions the plant is exposed to after being repotted.

Cliss - please don't be mislead by specific instructions about what pot sizes are best for what plants. The fact of the matter is, appropriate pot size is determined by the size of the plant material and the drainage/aeration characteristics of the soil you are using. Heavy (water-retentive) soils REQUIRE smaller soil volumes so the plant can use the water from the soil quickly, which hastens the return of appropriate volumes of air to the soil. If you are using a well-aerated soil that drains freely, pot size and concern about over-potting disappear with an increase in the the size of particles soils are made of. Soils that hold no, or little perched water actually have no upper limit as far as pot size is concerned. I also wouldn't try rooting your cuttings in water. Though roots form readily and often seemingly faster on many plants propagated in water, the roots produced are quite different from those produced in a soil-like, highly aerated medium (perlite - fine gravel - Turface - seed starting mix, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher percentage of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of inter-cellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). If you wish to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably best not to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The "water-formed" roots often break during transplant & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The effect is equivalent to beginning the cutting process over again with a cutting in which vitality has likely been reduced. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in soil, the cuttings in soil will always (for an extremely high percentage of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a soil medium for the reasons outlined above. I would also skip the misting. It's far more likely to cause problems than provide anything in the way of benefit. The most effective way to keep your foliage attractive is to employ a asoil that allows you to water copiously eveery time you water w/o risking root rot. This keeps soluble salt levels from building up in the soil solution and makes it easiest for plants to take up water. Al

Heythere, Toni! I am so in love with the plant in your top pic. What beautiful coloring! Love the Dr. Seuss look about the big 2nd one, too. Nice, thanks for sharing them! I have 3 Dracs, the 2 from this discussion, and a corn plant that WM had on clearance this spring. I knew there was nothing wrong with it, it just wanted to get out of WM. It's grown a lot this summer, too. I think the big one making new tops out of the branches is about 35 years old. Nobody remembers when it joined the family. Is the Aglao/Dieff planted in the same soil as your marginata? Are you asking about the Philodendron? If so, yes, those 2 plants have been companions in the same pot for around 10 years. I cut pieces of it off all the time to keep the mass at a manageable level. It's really cool the way the philo has roots about 2 feet long that grow all the way down to the dirt. This summer the philo has started making leaves 3 times as big as they used to be. I've read how they go into adult phase upon reaching the top of a tree but didn't think this little tree would be enough of a climb for it. I don't allow it to get much higher than the point where all of the branches start breaking from the main trunk, and keep weaving it around the trunks and back down to the soil. Maybe a factor as important as height is security/bracing. It's got a good grip on the tree in several places. I feel like I'm in the tropics when I look at that pot. That philo came from my Uncle's funeral about 15 years ago, and has had a hard-knock life also. It came in a wicker basket planter with plastic liner from florist and although I knew better, I never did anything about making a drain hole or repotting it. About 5 years later, I had the basket hanging on a shady hook in the yard and the wicker broke (decomposed?) from filling up with rain water while I was away and I found the plant in a heap on the ground the next day. I discarded the roots and put several cuttings in water, gave a few away, and put one in the pot of the Drac tree hoping it would hide the soil. It started doing that right away and the cuttings in water did great and even got moved 800 miles but then got neglected and dried out. So you could say this tree saved the philo's life. At this point, I'm not sure which plant is supporting which. Like me, both of them seem to really like being transplanted to the south and drinking sweet tea.

I'd say the plant benefited from being given a rest. All plants, I opine, can benefit from being allowed to stop developing new leaves and especially new bloom. Your ? geranium evidently has gained health from being allowed to rest. Now is the time to bring it out to develop new leaves. Pinch back any bloom it might start to develop...it shoudn't be pushed to produce something that it cant possibly feed. If the plant is of size, I suggest you cut it back by 1/3 to 1/2, give it some new fresh potting soil...look to its drainage by putting some shards or other medium under the soil, into a pot of size....6"....8"....10"...then into the brightest window you can find. West or south is ideal...but east will do in a pinch. Water it well...til drainage is seen in the saucer below....allow full drainage, then dump the excess. Don't begin fertilizing until you have serious new growth of leaves...then do so...20/20/20 at half rate every 4th or 5th watering. Always allow the surface to dry to the touch before watering and water always to the point that drainage is seen. Then dump the excess. It shouldn't take more than a few weeks before new growth is seen...up the fertilizer as growth proceeds. You are in zone 7 D.C.....your spring arrives a bit sooner than mine in zone 5 Ontario. Normally this is done by me in mid February, when full growth is allowed to resume. Your plant, if allowed to grow full out at this time, might be too soon for your putting the plant outside so you'd be required to hold off putting it outside and treat it more like a houseplant. If you think you might hold off doing the cutting back until about mid to late January, the plant could be cut back at that time, then allow it to grow full out. Normally, in more southerly zones, you are advised to cut the plant back at the time they are brought in..before they are touched by frost....then again, cutting it back in January when they are allowed to grow their fullest. Its up to you, whether you wish to have the plant grow up too fast. Geraniums will indeed come back as good as ever....better in fact.