mskitty38583

and yes you can trim the palms, but only the brown /yellow parts. you dont want to cut into the green.

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marco

Yeah. I'm quite familiar with that concept from working with outdoor ornamentals. Especially with verticillium wilt disease prevention in maples and fireblight control in hawthorn, crabapples, etc.

I'd just never heard of the nylon blade thing before, have you?

marco

[quote=Lagniappe;24093]

We have found that an extemely well draining mix consisting mostly of pine bark and perlite along with a pot with 4-5" of packing peanuts in the bottom to be the best way to keep these . We water often ,the majesties will show yellowing and browning of the leaf tips when they dont get enough to drink . the trick is to have a mix that will allow you to water very heavily while not remaining wet for extended periods .
We never fertilize! Only a little tea now and then . I had read early on that majesty palms were very salt sensitive and that one should be able to flush the soil often in container culture to prevent salt s building up . I decided then that artificial fertilizers would exacerbate this build up and that we would only use organics for our potted palms .
They have grown a great deal over the last few years and have been repotted twice .
We did lose one to crown rot (potted in miracle grow) and had another to be attacked by mealy bugs. All of them have had thier crappy stages but have bounced back ,eventually .


Hmmm....
Good point about the fertilizer.
I'll switch it over to an organic 'tea' fertilizer.
What type and analysis do you recommend?

And do you recommend feeding it at all in the winter?
(It does get good winter eastern exposure in the morning)

I saw on Dave's Garden website today a blog about how Majesty Palms were sensitive to 'tap water' in someone's outdoor setting in CA.

I use tap water that has had 2 days for the flouride to evaporate, and then I add the 8-7-6 fertilizer to it before I feed / water with it.
Would you say that this is adequate to get rid of most of the flouride?
Or should I be using distilled?

Everything else I use this water on does great, including the naners.

Lagniappe

I agree , if your getting good growth then you must have a happy plant .
Some problems can pop up out of nowhere though . like the accumulations of salts . It could take a while for this to become evident .

Indoor plants like to do goofy things too.
My white bird bloomed and , two months or so later, was attacked by mealybugs . I expected it to die but it pupped out and then put out new leaves of its own . Now ,a year later it started putting on leaves again and the mealy bugs are back as well .
My plants always defy the things I've read , both positively and negatively.
Never is this more extreme than when I've brought them indoors to live.

marco

You make me feel a lot better!

Yes, this is my only palm. But since I've had decent success now with this one (alive in the house for 15 months) I'll probably be looking for some more soon.
And I took your advice about the fertilizer, starting today...

My other indoor house plants worth mentioning, besides the bananas I've "trained" to be largely indoor plants, are tons of boston ferns, Maranta leuconeura, diefenbachia, a half dozen african violets, a 'bonsai-size' ficus (covered by all insurance companies including Geico!), and a flowering hibiscus that gets moved in and out every spring and fall.

This past summer I also was given some mystery 'fly-killing plant' by the same woman I told you about who I talked to today. (In trade for the naner)

The plant's REALLY wierd.
It's olive-grey with wavy cream horizontal stripes on the leaves.
And it "SPRAWLS" all over as it grows.
Supposedly the bloom kills flys when they land on it.
The bloom looks like miniature spaghetti 'erupting'.

(No digital camera in the house)

Anyone know what this is called?

mskitty38583

i havent heard of the nylon blades...very interesting. geico huh....are you in good hands??lol. glad to know bout them salts and a palm. change my way of thinking. clueless about the carnivore..ive heard of the pitcher plants( got to get one when lowes gets them in) know bout the venus( did you know you can feed them raw ground beef?) i thought that was kool. and if you have a venus out by your compost it will gt rid of the flies. the one your talking about i dont know. you could call lowes and talk to their "master gardner" they do the ordering so he might know,or your local nursery. it sounds familiar, just cant place it.

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