This plant is easy to grow,.............. at first. When it gets to be 3 or 4 years old, it seems to just grow into a strange unruly shape, and it's not a plant that is easy to prune, especially if you have not pruned before. I changed my shefs soil to fast draining, which can be just chicken gritt and or perlite and potting soil. I made sure the soil dried out within two or three days, at least. This plant wants to get dryer than most plants, like three inches deep or more dry.
I have a shef I chopped back this spring, because It developed some side shoots that gave it a weird shape. I could not see pruning it would make the plant much better looking so I finally brought it home from work, and whacked it down. It has been giving me the cold shoulder for it all for a couple of months, but finally it is now busting out some new growth at the top and at the soil level too. It looks like it got a hair cut, but it looks better than it did before it had its procedure.
I don't know if I will ever be good at keeping this plant in shape, but I am going to keep a closer eye on it from now on.
