My impression of the conventional wisdom is to scrape the scabs off, ... perhaps not all of them, ... while avoiding cutting into the meat of the trunk.

Yes ... this is a good discussion topic, because I don't know that I've seen successful neck scraping in my experience. I do it every time I bury a neck, and the plants will survive such a repotting, ... but when I got to repot again, ... or to discard, ... it doesn't appear that the plant has grown roots from a buried neck.

I have successfully neck scraped before, but I do not like how it works in the long term. If you do it long enough, scraping the neck and reburying when you repot, you end up with a hard "root" down the center of your finer roots that actually in my limited understanding serves very little purpose except to make repotting more difficult and possibly increasing the chances for a negative reaction to too much water.

After seeing how problematic chronic neck scraping was with the last one I repotted, I think I'd rather crown the older, well-established plants I have that need it.

I did some neck scraping a while back. My problem was poison ivy.

chuckle chuckle,,,,very funny Jeff!

On a more serious note, sometimes I do scrape the neck somewhat. Not very much at all however, and then I plant. I also have planted necks that I haven't scraped. Didn't notice that much difference. Both re-rooted and grew. I didn't pay much attention to see how fast one rooted over the other so I can't give you that information. BUT I think on your next try, use restraint. Just gently run your thumbnail down the neck and be done with it. You don't need to get off all of the old "bark" as I call it. Or don't scrape at all! It will root regardless. Rosie

Yes, I agree, treatment of any kind is not really necessary if you have sufficient neck.

Creating too big of a wound surface... not a good idea. You can get away with it - or the infection will kill it. Probably if the neck is too corky - better to cut higher..

Just to further clarify Irina, at the time there was no sign of infection while repotting. Are you saying with a big wound surface, it is now prone to getting a new infection?

Lots of new info for me. Great discussion!

Hi midlandsgardner!!! Welcome out of lurkdom!!!! Rosie

hahaha - caught me, Rosie!!!

<:) Rosie