Welcome to this article that will be talking about the possibility of trimming a ZZ plant. This isn’t really the best practice unless you have yellowing leaves on the plant. Trimming and pruning a plant is often done to try and make it grow in a bushier way.
The ZZ plant will already be growing in a rather bushy way. So trying to trim the plant for that goal is not that necessary really. The only time we would recommend trying to trim away leaves on the plant would be when there are yellowing leaves starting to appear.
Follow along in the article here and we will continue talking about the topic of growing and caring for a ZZ plant. It’s one of the best houseplants for beginners looking to get into gardening. The plant is rather resilient to a lot of diseases and pests.
Trim ZZ Plant
As we said at the beginning of the article here already, the ZZ plant is not really a plant that does well if you trim and prune it. Instead, the best practice is to just leave it be and grow the way it naturally does, which is in a bushy way.
We mentioned that the only time you should be trimming and pruning a ZZ plant would be when you are seeing yellowing leaves on the plant. That will happen when the plant is experiencing a lot of stress.
The stress could be caused by a variety of different things. The most common two are either from too much sunlight for a prolonged period. We recommend trying to get about 8 – 10 hours of sunlight each day. If it keeps getting more then the plant will be stressed.
Too much sunlight causes the leaves to get sunburnt and eventually will start turning yellow. Those leaves are no longer able to perform photosynthesis effectively. So trimming them away is really the best option here.
Try and use some fertilizers in the soil to boost the nutrition there if you are looking at trimming any part of the plant. It will reduce the risk of any other parts of the plant turning yellow, as trimming leaves causes stress.
If you would like to learn about how you could fix a leggy ZZ plant then we highly recommend this article right here, How To Fix Leggy ZZ Plant.
How Do You Prune A ZZ Plant
Pruning a ZZ plant is not the most common practice as the plant will naturally grow in a rather bushy way already. This makes trimming or pruning the plant only making it more stressed.
If you are deciding to trim any part of the plant to perhaps propagate new plants then you should use some fertilizer for the soil. That will make the recovery of the plant more likely and effective. Otherwise, it might take a lot of time and effort to get the plant back to what it once was.
If you want to learn how to grow a ZZ plant hydroponically then this article here will be great for you, ZZ Plant Hydroponic.
How Do You Shape A ZZ Plant
Shaping a ZZ plant is not the easiest task to undertake. The plant will normally grow rather bushy. But if you would like to shape it into something like a bonsai plant then the string is a great option.
Using string to push the leaves and plant more together will make it appear bushier. But be careful not to tie it too tight as it might harm the leaves instead.
