Hi David,
I like that about this shot as well!
The amount of cropping all depends on what you intend to do with the image, web share as it is here, or print it large, keep in mind that this could be printed in 8x10 with good results, I used to print photos from images with less pixel count and files sizes smaller than this with no degradation.
Printing technology has improved quite a bit as well (since the late 90s when I was printing a lot).
It’s hard to tell without seeing the original scene and image.
I always set my camera to a neutral color profile so the camera records the shot with slightly less color than the scene or subject so I can do my own color correction, white balance is difficult even if you pre-set it in the camera, so you’re better off using auto white balance, then adjusting it by the slider in ACR, at least that’s been my experience and what works best for me.
I feel that this image has too much red in it, there’s even a strong red cast in the areas between the stems in the upper portion of the image, that may have been there before but it seems like either a post process effect or maybe the camera caused a little bleed over when it recorded it, or maybe I just think it’s one of those two.
Either way, that red cast makes the image feel as though it’s all shot by a red lamp for lighting the scene and it’s not natural looking.
To me, there’s two things that can cause an image to loose depth, one is too much focus front to back or, two, there isn’t enough color separation between elements.
BTW, I love how you are using long exposures with low ISO settings to do some of these shots! It’s one of my favorite methods even in the field.
I played around with your image and I can’t tell you what all I adjusted, I tried a bit of everything and it was all too much to write or remember.
My goal was to remove the red from between the stems as much as possible but still keep the red stems (with graduated red to yellowish orange).
To me it has more depth and the color separation adds interest to the scene.
I hope this helps, David
Edit: I didn’t use any masks for any of it, just basic adjustments, the color adjustments were done in the Color Mixer HSL panel in Adobe Camera Raw.
Love the shot , too 
