Delosperma's radical pruning (13 pics)

Brace yourselves! This is not for faint-hearted!

I have grown two Delosperma cooperi plants from seed in 2012 and when they were big enough the opportunity presented itself to grow them as little bonsai trees instead of letting them crawl around like Delosperma cooperi like to do. There's no room for crawling on my windowsill anyway. You can follow the development of these plants from the very start, if you are interested. 

They both started out very well, but while one of them has grown to be a real beauty (photos later), the other kinda got strange. In fact it has developed into this monstrosity.

Let's take a closer look. From certain angels it still looks roundish and okay.

But actually, those are just long limbs wrapped around themselves. That's not pretty. 

Let's see what we can do about it. It is going to be radical!!

Snip.

Snip.

Snip.

Here we go! Much better. It's like a summer haircut. I think the branch with those longer leaves will be cut eventually but I will leave it for now. Once the leftovers start growing it should be a ball of leaves on a thick trunk. I'll keep you posted.

Now, what do we have here?

Let's cut and clean them into some neat little cuttings.

I ran out of pumice so the industrial cactus soil will have to do. They will probably root in it better anyway.

Mila approves.