The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
As spring nears, houseplants feel it too and can get unruly
No matter that winter winds and snow still come and go in much of the country. The sun’s earlier rising and higher climb into the sky let us know that spring is on the way. Even houseplants indoors feel the changing season.
Take a closer look at the stems of your houseplants. Any young, new leaves? Swelling buds? Inside their pots, roots might likewise be awakening. All of this makes today, tomorrow, or sometime soon a good time for repotting and pruning.
HOW TALL IS TOO TALL?
The most obvious reason to prune a houseplant’s stems is to keep the plant manageable. For example, growing in the ground in a tropical climate, branches of weeping fig, a familiar houseplant, will reach skyward and spread as high and wide as a sugar maple’s. Indoors, at the very least, your ceilings limit the desired height of a houseplant. For looks, you might want to keep the plant smaller, perhaps much, much smaller.
When pruning the stems of a houseplant, the goal is to reduce its size without giving it a hacked back look. For a plant with many stems, such as a weeping fig, a few severe cuts usually gives better results than many small cuts. Trace one of the tallest stems down to its origin, and cut it off right there. Perhaps do this with another tall stem too.
After one or more drastic cuts have lowered the plant, go back over the plant to make some smaller cuts. Cut back any dead or diseased stems, and any that look gawky or out of place.
There are houseplants, such as dracaena and ponytail palm, that naturally sport only one or very few stems. These rarely need pruning; when they do, it’s because they’ve finally grown too tall. Lop back the stem to lower than the final desired height. New growth will appear near the cut, perhaps even a couple of new stems. If you want to keep the plant single-stemmed, remove all but one of the emerging stems.
CHECK BELOW GROUND ALSO
Pruning the stems of a houseplant is just the first step. After a few years, depending on how fast a plant grows, roots will fill a pot until they have no room left to grow. Roots attempting to escape out the drainage hole of a pot is one indication of overcrowding.
More telling is to have a look at the root ball itself. Slide the root ball out of the pot. If it’s a large plant, the easiest way to do this is to first tip the pot on its side. Are the roots cramped together and circling around and around the outside edge of the root ball?
If the roots are overcrowded, you could just move the plant to a larger pot. Of course, then it will grow even bigger, which may or may not be your wish.
If the plant is to go back into its old home, root pruning is needed. Stand the plant upright and — brutal as it might seem — slice off the outer edge of soil and roots all around the root ball. The bigger the root ball, the more you can slice off.
Stand the plant back in its old pot and pack new potting soil in the gaps between the shorn root ball and the container. Use a stick or your fingers to firmly press it in place.
Water the plant, and it’s ready for spring.
NOT FOR EVERY PLANT
No need to prune and repot every houseplant every year. Many grow very slowly, so might need this treatment only every few years. And some plants — clivia and amaryllis, for example — grow in clumps rather than skyward-shooting stems, and actually do better with their roots cramped in their pots.
With Congress discussing another round of stimulus checks and other forms of coronavirus relief there are some very plausible reasons to consider delaying filing your 2020 income taxes at this time.
As painful as this is for me to write since this only compresses an already very short time line to complete the taxes, there are a number of reasons related to this relief package that could have a significant impact on whether filing the 2020 tax return at this time is a wise decision.
First and foremost is the fact that one of the items in the bill being negotiated in Congress is to make a portion of the 2020 unemployment compensation not taxable. The current proposed legislation exempts up to $10,200 of 2020 unemployment compensation from federal income taxes. Yes, you are understanding that correctly in that even though it is mid-March Congress is proposing to make a retroactive tax change impacting the 2020 returns. Our firm has already filed dozens of returns that include this item that will need to be amended if this item is included in the legislation that ultimately passes.
Once I heard about this item being included in legislation I placed a hold on those returns that had not been filed that include unemployment compensation. I recommend this same strategy for all taxpayers until this is clarified. Holding a return up at this point will delay a refund, but if the legislation that passes includes this provision the corresponding income tax obligation could be substantially lower. Waiting to file is a far simpler process than amending the return and waiting the significantly additional time for the amended return to be processed.
The challenge with this proposed legislation change at this late date is that the tax preparation software will need to be updated and this will take time. In addition, many states, including Ohio, begin with the federal adjusted gross income as the start of the income tax calculations. It remains to be seen if the various states will be in alignment with this significant reduction in taxable income by making some or all of the unemployment compensation not taxable.
There is a completely different reason to consider waiting to file the 2020 taxes even if the taxpayer did not receive any unemployment compensation in 2020. If the taxpayer had higher income in 2020 as compared to 2019 this could impact whether the taxpayer will receive the upcoming stimulus payment as well as how much stimulus money that they do receive. The stimulus payments are based on the income of the last year of the tax return that was filed. If the income has increased between 2019 and 2020 the taxpayer may have originally been eligible for a larger stimulus payment than if the IRS had used the 2019 tax return as the basis of the stimulus calculation.
On the flip side of this however, is if your income went down in 2020 as compared to 2019 and you did not receive any unemployment compensation you may want to accelerate your 2020 income tax filing in order to maximize the stimulus payment that you would receive. Without an analysis of your specific situation relative to the stimulus cutoffs and the income breakdown for a married couple between both taxpayers it is not possible to give a one approach fits all type of guidance on this. In either case an analysis of the timing of filing and filing status selection could have a significant impact on the amount of any stimulus payment received.
As the saying goes, the only thing certain is change. In the current COVID and COVID relief world we are living in this has never been truer. Working closely to understand what Congress ultimately passes and planning your tax filing accordingly could not only save you money, but could also save you the headache of needing to file an amended tax return as well.