House plants need to be pruned, not only above the soil, but
below as well. Once a plant is as large as you would like, the
soil around the roots needs to be renewed from time to time.
Cutting back the roots is the only way to do this without
transplanting the plant.

Root pruning for some plants needs to be done every year, and others
only need pruning once every few years. You can test to see if
pruning is needed by taking the plant out of the pot and looking
at the roots. If they are matted in a ball, you need to prune
them. Also, if you see roots coming out the bottom of the pot,
it is time to prune.

To prune, you can either pull the roots out of the matted ball
and spread them out, shorten the roots themselves by cutting
them, or slice the root ball apart with a knife. Loosen the rest
of the roots after slicing the ball apart. You can now return
the plant to the pot and put new soil around the roots.

You will have to prune the stems some when the plant is back in
the pot. It will help keep the plant proportional to the size of
the container. At this point, you are just trying to keep the
plant healthy and beautiful, not have it grow more.

Pruning techniques are the same indoors as outdoors, the only
difference being that you prune more extremely indoors due to
size constraints. You should shorten stems and pinch out the
tips of growing shoots where you want branches to be. Where you
do not want branching, cut away entire stems at their bases.
When the whole stem is removed, it hardly ever grown back. If
you want to shorten an indoor tree, shorten the major limbs and
side branches, just like you would do outdoors.

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