Hi Laurie, Welcome to GW! Your "how-to" questions should be posted on the Discussions side, rather than the gallery. This side is intended for showing pics of your plants. I wouldn't prune the plant now. I'd wait until the plant is actively growing again and that would not be until next Spring. If it's healthy and happy, leave it alone.:) Good Luck, GH

UPDATE: I took two cuttings off of the top of the plant yesterday. I laid them on a paper towel overnight so that the cuts could heal over. This morning I "stuck" each of them into different mediums. I'm slowly building up my collection, so I don't have a very large variety in soils/growing mediums yet. I put one of them into a peat moss/soil mixture. Probably not the best, but hopefully it will do for now. The other one went into a pot containing a mix of small gravel and soil. Now I'm just waiting patiently to see what happens. I'll check their appearance each day for signs of wilting, etc. One of them is growing a new leaf, so that will be one thing to keep an eye on. If they still look healthy in a week or two than I'll give them a little tug to see if they've rooted. Should I not water them until then? I realize I'm not following all of the advice above, but I simply don't have the materials/means at this time, since I'm a poor college student. The main plant still looks healthy, especially now that it's not so top heavy. It has new leaves and nodes coming in, so if these cuttings fail I can always try again in a few weeks. Cheers! -Jacob

No plant likes to be rootbound. What is necessary for plants to stay alive is for their roots to not rot, which can happen so easily in a pot with dense soils, like ground dirt, or bagged mixes of predominantly tiny particles of peat, (or to simply shrivel from simply never getting any water.) Having very little soil around the roots would make the soil dry more quickly, and for even the most dedicated plant-overwaterers to not rot the roots of their plants. This is not ideal, since most non-cactus plants are stressed by dry conditions, it's just a way of coping with soil that has little air in it when moist. Negative experiences in regard to potting-up, where an undisturbed root ball is placed into a bigger pot with more soil around it, vs. doing a repotting, as described below, can give rise to old wives' tales about plants not liking to be repotted/disturbed. Potting-up a root-bound plant that has roots surrounding the outside root ball often lead to this negative experience because those roots had adapted to accessing oxygen around the outside of the root ball and surrounding them with more dense, soggy-but-airless potting soil will likely lead to suffocation. The reason bonsai masters are able to keep potted entities alive for hundreds of years is because they care for the roots by trimming them and changing the soil. A plant grows from the roots-up, so if the roots are not healthy, gorgeous foliage will decline &/or no flowers can form. When you unpot a plant and find a pancake of roots at the bottom, chopping that off will give roots a chance to grow normally again for a while and will make removing the old soil easier. Roots need oxygen & moisture at the same time to function. Just air = shriveling. Just moisture = suffocation & rotting. Either will cause root death and dessicated foliage because the roots have been unable to deliver moisture. Having to let soil dry, as if ones' tropical jungle plant was a cactus, is an unnecessarily stressful coping mechanism for non-desert dwelling plants in soil without enough oxygen for the roots to stay healthy when it is moist and can lead to premature loss of older leaves and in extreme cases, dry shriveled roots/dead plant. The ability of roots to be able to function properly depends greatly on the soil structure/texture, which can change over time. Potting soil tends to be very dense, mostly peat, with very little air in it. Any kind of organic ingredients decompose into smaller bits over time, and roots fill air spaces over time as they grow through soil. Replacing soil periodically is usually necessary to keep plants healthy because of these reasons. A more porous, chunky, airy soil (like cactus/palm, if one is buying bagged,) can have more air in it even when it is moist because there is space between the particles. When there are tiny particles of any kind in a pot, such as peat, sand, silt, clay, they filter into all of the tiny spaces in a pot, eliminating the air. "Overwatering" is the label and manifestation when roots have suffocated and/or rotted, combo of both. Over time, organic bits decompose into smaller bits, so even the "best" soil, if it has organic components, will need to be replaced when this happens. The speed at which this happens depends on many variables, but on average, about 1-3 years. More details: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1490818/good-growing-practices-an-overview-for-beginners?n=175

I know this thread is a few months old, but I'm wondering if you ever figured out what was up with your Peperomia. I have a clusiifolia that does the same thing. I honestly didn't realize it wasn't normal until I read this thread! But I've also noticed possible signs of oedema that I previously thought to be physical damage from curious cats or the high traffic area this plant is in, so maybe it does have to do with water uptake in some way. Is it temperature-related? Mine lives right next to a plate glass window that gets good light, but can also get very cool when there's no sun (which is often). I've never treated mine with pesticide, other than dabbing a little rubbing alcohol to check those blisters for scale. I've had it a little over a year. It has grown a lot and it bloomed all winter. Here you can see some curly new leaves coming in, with a normal looking larger leaf: This is one of the funkiest looking ones: And this is what I suspect might be oedema: