How to Trim Crinum Lilies

Wear leather, thick fabric or waterproof gloves. The gloves help you with grip on the cutting tools once plant sap bleeds. Moreover, contact with the sap may cause skin irritation in people with sensitive skin.

Slice off dead, collapsing or yellowing leaves on the outside of the leaf clump on the plant stem neck. Hold the leaf with your off-hand and trace it downward with your favored hand to where the leaf blade originates on the stem. Grasp a paring knife or open-bladed bypass pruners and slice the leaf as close to the stem as possible. Use care not to slice your off-hand or other healthy leaf bases nearby.

Cut off old flower stems at their base deep in the cluster of leaves. Once all individual blossoms have withered, trace the flower stem downward to find it origin and cut the hollow stem off with a knife or bypass pruners. Retain the flower stem if you wish to obtain seeds from the developing capsules later on.

Sever small plantlets around the base of the main crinum lily plant to tidy the plant clump or to prevent a crowded thicket of leaves that shade light from each other. Trace the small plantlets downward from their leaves to their neck base and cut it off flush with the soil.

Trim off brown or mushy leaves -- especially if the unattractive areas are in the top half of the leaf blade -- by cutting the leaf 1/2 inch below the dying or rotting leaf tissues. Use this tidying technique sparingly, as arbitrarily cut off leaves develop brown edges later and it ruins the natural silhouette of the plant. Ideally, keep as many green, photosynthesizing leaves intact, as it provides food for the bulb, leading to better flowering in the future.