How to Prune Kalanchoe (Florist Kalanchoe) with Stems That Are Too Tall: A Detailed Guide to Pruning Timing and Methods
Among flowering plants, kalanchoe is one of the fastest growers. With proper watering and fertilizing and suitable temperatures, a two-to-three-month-old rooted cutting can grow into a large pot. Some old kalanchoe plants, or those with overly long stems caused by improper care, need timely pruning to control their shape, with the overall height best kept between 15 and 20 cm. Otherwise, it will not only affect their ornamental value but also reduce the number of flowers. So how do you prune a kalanchoe with overly tall stems? When should you prune?
1. How do you prune a kalanchoe with overly tall stems?
Right now, kalanchoe is either in the bud stage or in full bloom, or at the latest in the flower bud differentiation stage. If you prune now, there will certainly be no flowers in the short term. If you can bring yourself to do it, prune now; if not, you can wait until the flowering period is over and prune next spring.
2. How to prune
If a kalanchoe has been grown for a long time and the lower stems have become heavily woody and bare, you can steel yourself and give it a hard cut back, leaving only about 5-10 cm of stem. Kalanchoe grows very quickly, and under suitable care conditions it will soon sprout new shoots. When the new shoots have grown 4 or 5 pairs of leaves, pinch out the growing tips to control the height of the kalanchoe and encourage side branches to emerge, while also removing any overly dense, diseased or weak side branches. Of course, if you cannot bring yourself to cut it back hard, you can also just prune the overly long branches down to the height you want.
3. Aftercare following pruning
After pruning, do not water or fertilize immediately. Place the plant in a well-ventilated spot with weaker light and let the wounds dry. If the air humidity is high and it is stuffy, the pruned stems are prone to turning black and rotting. Once the wounds have healed, move the plant to a spot with plenty of light and apply some balanced compound fertilizer, used together with Yehong Shiguang microbial inoculant, to promote rapid growth of the kalanchoe, making the leaves large and emerald green and the stems and leaves sturdy.
There are several pitfalls when pruning a kalanchoe with overly long stems. One is being unwilling to cut hard and only trimming the top, which fails to achieve the dwarfing effect. Another is that the plant itself has problems, such as root rot or being diseased or weak; a heavy pruning in that case may directly lead to its death, so do not prune an unhealthy plant heavily first, and wait until it recovers before pruning. A third is leaving too few buds when pruning, so the new shoots grow sparsely and you can only enrich the plant shape by pinching again to encourage more buds. A fourth is heavy pruning during the dormant period, when new shoots are slow to sprout or grow very slowly.