Gadenin日本語Get the appThe year at a glance
A schefflera grows through the warm half of the year and slows to almost nothing in the cold half. Everything that stresses the plant belongs in the growing half: repotting, hard pruning, root pruning, taking cuttings and air layering. Everything in the cold half is maintenance and restraint.
The table below is the whole year on one screen. The rest of the page explains the judgement calls inside each season.
| Season | Watering | Feeding | Main jobs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early spring | Every 7 to 10 days | None yet | Move to the brightest spot, clean the leaves |
| Late spring | Every 5 to 7 days | Start at half strength | Repot, cut back hard, take cuttings, start air layers |
| Summer | Every 4 to 7 days | Monthly liquid feed | Pinch tips, watch for spider mites, shade from afternoon sun |
| Early autumn | Every 7 to 10 days | Last feed of the year | Bring outdoor plants in, check for pests before they come inside |
| Late autumn | Every 10 to 14 days | None | Move back towards the window as light drops |
| Winter | Every 2 to 3 weeks | None | No cutting, no repotting, keep off cold glass at night |
These intervals assume a pot around eight inches (20 cm) in a normally heated room. A smaller pot or a sunnier spot dries faster. Always check the compost rather than counting days.
Spring is when the work happens
As the room warms and the light strengthens, the plant starts moving and can recover from disturbance. This is the only sensible window for anything invasive, and it is a wide one: late spring through midsummer covers repotting, hard cutting back to fix legginess, root pruning, tip cuttings and starting air layers.
Do not stack them all on one plant in one week. Repot or cut back, not both, and leave a month between operations unless you are root pruning, where the top cut and the root cut belong together.
Start feeding only once you can see new growth, not on a date. Fertilizer given to a plant that has not started moving simply accumulates as salts in the compost and damages roots.
- Clean the leaves first Before anything else, wipe both surfaces of the leaves and look at the undersides. Winter is when spider mites build up unnoticed, and starting the growing season with a clean plant is worth more than any feed.
- Decide on the shape Look at the plant and decide whether you are cutting it back this year. If the lower stem is bare and you want it clothed again, spring is the moment, and it takes a full season to see the result.
- Repot if the evidence says so Check whether it is pot bound before you assume it is. One size up only, and expect the plant to pause for a month afterwards.
Summer
Growth is fastest now and water use is highest, but so are the two summer risks. The first is scorch: a schefflera that was fine on a south windowsill in spring will bleach in midsummer, so move it back from the glass or add a sheer curtain before the damage happens.
The second is spider mites, which breed fastest in hot, dry, still air. A room with the windows shut against the heat is exactly their conditions. Spray the leaf undersides with plain water once a week through summer and you will prevent most outbreaks rather than treating them.
Pinch the growing tips of any shoot running away on its own. A pinch in summer produces two shoots within a few weeks, and that is how you build density during the season rather than waiting for next spring's prune.
Autumn: make the switch early
Two changes have to happen in autumn and both are easy to leave too late. The light falls, so the summer position that was correctly a step back from the glass is now too dark, and the plant should go back to the brightest spot you have. At the same time the plant is using less water, so the watering interval has to stretch. Keeping a summer watering routine into a darkening autumn is the classic route to winter root rot.
Stop feeding before the temperature drops rather than after. Anything left in the compost when growth stops sits there all winter and burns roots that are not taking it up.
If the plant has been outdoors, bring it in before nights fall below 54F (12C), and wash the leaf undersides and the pot exterior before it comes through the door. Expect it to drop some leaves in the fortnight after the move; that is the light step down, not a disease.
| Conditions | Move outdoors from | Bring indoors by | Main winter concern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mild climate, frost rare | Mid spring | Mid to late autumn | Cold at the window overnight |
| Average, distinct winter | Early summer | Early autumn | An unheated room falling below 50F (10C) |
| Cold climate, long winter | Midsummer only | Late summer | Keeping enough light through a dark winter |
| Kept indoors all year | Not applicable | Not applicable | Legginess from insufficient light |
Winter: hold it, do not grow it
The winter job is to keep the plant alive and in shape until spring, not to make progress. Water rarely, feed not at all, cut nothing and repot nothing. Every one of those restrictions exists because the plant cannot regrow what you take from it until the warmth returns.
Two positional details matter. Keep the leaves off cold window glass overnight, because a leaf touching frozen glass blackens where it touches. And keep the plant out of the direct blast of a heater or vent, which dries leaf tips brown and creates perfect spider mite conditions in a matter of weeks.
One or two of the oldest lower leaves going yellow and dropping over winter is normal turnover. A run of leaves dropping over a fortnight is not, and in winter the cause is almost always compost that has stayed wet because the watering interval was never stretched.
A heated room is dry as well as warm. Mist the leaf undersides through winter and check them monthly, because a mite population that establishes in midwinter is a serious infestation by the time growth restarts in spring.
Keeping a record that pays off
A calendar written by somebody else is a starting point. The version that actually fits your home comes from a handful of notes taken over one year, and they take seconds each.
Write down four dates: when you saw the first new growth in spring, when you last fed the plant, when you moved it for each season, and when growth visibly stopped in autumn. Add the interval you actually settled into for watering in each season, not the one you intended. Then add anything unusual, such as the date you first found mites, the date you cut the plant back, and where on the stem you cut.
By the second year that record is worth more than any general guide. It tells you that growth starts three weeks earlier in your south room than the books say, so you can start feeding then. It tells you that mites appear a fortnight after the heating goes on, so you can start misting first. And when you look at a bare lower stem and wonder whether last year's prune worked, the note of where you cut and what happened afterwards answers the question directly.