I just root pruned my asparagus fern, and it responded very nicely to it. The only warning is that the roots are very, very tough. You may need some serious tools. I just sliced through the whole root ball and cut it in half. They store water in the roots, so to be on the safe side, I repotted them in a 5:1:1 mix and watered only very mildly. It seemed to look better almost immediately.

I'm not an expert, but I hope that bit helps.

Yes - you can probably divide it with a hatchet or pruning saw & pot into a smaller pot. They are genetically very vigorous, so will tolerate a lot of stress.

Al

I wish they were genetically able to be planted outside in my area. That would be a lot easier to deal with! Thank you both - I will proceed this week with tools in hand.

Going forward, I'd like to find a way for the foliage growth to keep up with the root growth.

Deanna

Do you think that putting a tray of pebbles with water underneath may help in the winter? Or moving it to bathroom for humidity?

I'm in dry ol' Arizona, but one reason I think mine does okay is that it is surrounded on three sides by plants in water. It may get humidity from those surrounding plants....also, until I repotted it, it always had a tray with water and pebbles underneath.

GF - Plants are naturally shedding organisms; they automatically balance their root to shoot ratio. IOW, if you prune off a fraction of the top of a plant, and leave the roots intact, the plant has internal chemical messengers that stimulate the plant to quickly replace the 'missing' top growth. If you prune roots and leave the top intact, the plant is stimulated to focus its energy allocation on replacing roots. If there is a significant loss of either top mass or bottom (root) mass, die back (shedding) of it's counterpart can occur. You can't prevent that from occurring, and the only hand you might play is by simultaneously pruning roots and shoots so they end up in balance when you're done; but still, the plant will do the fine tuning because you'll find that there is a relationship between particular roots and particular branches that varies in the degree of dedication, one to the other, by species. IOW, root A has a closer relationship to branch A than any other branch and the exclusivity of that relationship varies by species. The reciprocal of that relationship is also true. So, if you prune root A or branch A, the 'adjustment' in root growth or top growth will be greater in it's opposite counterpart more so than in the rest of the branches or roots. So a mechanism is in place whereby the entire organism as well as individual root to shoot relationships will automatically be balanced.

Lauren - I did a little experiment with a bonsai tree. After measuring a rooms RH, I set the potted tree above a large tray full of water and pebbles and placed the same digital hygrometer used to measure the room's RH in its branches. A half hour later, RH had increased only .4 % - 4/10 of 1%, an insignificant amount. So, if your wish is to raise RH surrounding your plants, a humidifier suited to raising the RH of at least the room where the plants gather for companionship is the best way, followed distantly by grouping your plants together, though the more plants you have, the better the later works.

Al

I'm thinking possibly the cutting back of the roots might help the winter loss of foliage. Reason being that the water just runs through, probably because the pot contains mostly roots and not much soil. So cutting the roots will allow more uptake of moisture when I water the plant. When I think back 10 years ago when the plant was smaller, it didn't have the problem of losing so much foliage in the winter.

Deanna

Thank you, Al, for the info! Just got back from vacation, hence my late response....

..... most welcome.

Al