Indoor Gardening and Houseplants: Include soil when converting garden plants into houseplants?, 1 by tapla

tapla wrote:
If you're intent on bringing plants growing in the earth inside, I'd cut them back quite hard while they're in the ground, and wait a day or two to lift them. I'd work most of the soil off the roots by dunking them in a tub and using a homemade root pic to pretty much bare-root them. Then I'd pot in a fast-draining, well-aerated potting soil and put them in the shade out of wind until they recover. Your potting soil should be one you can water to beyond saturation (so you're flushing the soil as you water) w/o worry the soil will stay soggy so long it limits root function or wrecks root health.

Also, on your cuttings: once a new break (branch) has started growing in a leaf axil, the large leaf that provided the axillary bud should be removed to limit water loss. In the picture below, you can see all the new axillary shoots in leaf axils (crotches) that formed after I cut this Ficus back hard. If I was starting that branch as a cutting, I would remove all the large leaves that had axillary shoots as a way to slow water loss from the cutting.

You can also do that on a continuing basis after the plants are reestablished as an energy-management tool, if you need/want it. It reduces the amount of food the plant makes, which limits internode length and leaf size so you get fuller, more compact growth.

Al