I brought home a very sad rubber plant from my old office four years ago. It was little more than a twig with a single leaf left on it. After a lot of care, it is now beautiful but it is taking over. It stands 42" high and about the same in diameter.

The question is this: what on earth do you do when they get too big. Obviously it will not survive outside and just slinging it in the bin feels a bit like murder (I have a hard enough time chucking seedling plants). Persuading it to root a cutting has not been successful and it is taking all the light from my bay window, so decision time is fast approaching.

Anyone got any suggestions? :help:

Give it to your local GP surgery. They are usually dull places in need of a little cheering up!

Rubber plants grow amazingly quickly when they're happy. You must be giving it lots of TLC :) .

I don't know the answer, but I know a place where you might find it: here (http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk.rec.gardening?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8). I know there are some real plant experts on there. If they can't help you directly, they might be able to direct you to somone who can.

Give it to meeee :)
plants are great and I am slowly filling my house with them.
:)

Trim it right down and makes lots of little rubber plants! :)

neeeeek! I have PM'd you - it is all yours if you can pick it up from Killamarsh.

feargal - I thought of the GP immediately but unfortunately, they have just filled their plant space with some dragon tree things!

Take a cutting off it by grafting (complicated) then discard the original plant and grow on the cutting.

This is what my mum does. I bought her one as a housewarming gift about 18 years ago. I think we are on about 3rd generation now.

Ah! I tried air layering it but the cut healed around the moss! Having said that, I have never been any good at taking any cuttings of anything at all, except things you hack off and stuff into water!

Sorry parcher, thats what I meant, (air layering). You need to keep the cut on the stem open by inserting a sliver of matchstick in rather than a bit of moss. My mum seems to be able to do this, she uses potting compost in a plastic bag fixed to the stem. This doesnt make any sense unless you see a picture, I know!

Am I the only one who read the thread title as 'Rubber pants - what do you do with them when they get too big?'

I love plants. At my old flat my ex- and I had loads including a mental rubber plant called Frank :loopy: and then we rescued a Weeping Fig and it took over. Since I moved to where I am now I just can't grow plants for toffee. I don't know if it's the GCH or what. I'm on to my third spider plant (I could breed them like nothing in the flat) which is showing signs of deterioration, my dragon tree died that my mum bought me as a moving-in gift, and then my second rubber plant gradually died. My Xmas cacti is going great guns (flowered twice but has a rest outside at my mum's every summer - when it flowers again) and my Yucca is doing well. But nothing else will grow here :(

On a slight footnote, my mum put her Yucca outside in 2003 (thinking it would die, but it was just too big for inside their flat), leaving me to water it while her and my dad went away for six months. They came home 2 weeks after its last watering and in those two weeks the trunk split and now it has two HUGE plant-heads (dunno what else you would call them) and has to be tied to the wall to stop it falling over :o

hire it out instead of a bouncy castle?

hire it out instead of a bouncy castle?
Hah! :hihi:
That's quality

I was given one as a tiny houseplant when I moved into my house, years later it had grown to over 20 foot and had to be stood at the bottom of the stairs where it grew up as high as the banister upstairs, needless to say I eventually threw it out as I sick of seeing it.

An update on the rubber plant (called Cedric)! Neeeeeeeek has just picked it up to take him to his new home. Of course, whether he can get it out of the car again is another matter .....