You've found the famous Dave's Garden website! Join this friendly global community that shares tips and ideas for home and gardens, along with seeds and plants!
Check out the DG homepage for a brief overview of what you'll find in this gardening mega-site.
Login
If you don't have an account yet, visit the registration page to sign up.
I'm a beginner to plants. I bought a sickly dracaena marginata from a grocery chain a few months ago, with the hopes of healing it. It's doing much better now in springtime, but is still suffering from the following problems:
bent or partially torn leaves
spotted brown dry spots on leaves
one stalk that is really in bad shape.
The stalk concerns me the most. Its leaves are now all dried and yellow, and when I squeezed the stalk, I found it was all hollow at the bottom, like paper! (The other two healthy stalks are solid and firm). The top of the bad stalk is moist, which is why it appears darker in the photo. However, you can also see it appears by some miracle that there is a new growth growing in the middle of the dead leaves on this bad stalk. What do I do, cut the stalk? Cut the dead leaves? If so, how?:
I have just pruned the leaves on the two healthy stalks that were bent back too much, or split in the center, or had brown spots. I usually cut the bad leaf in a pointy shape at the end, but I am not sure if I pruned correctly:
There are still some brown spots on the leaves. I wasn't sure if I should prune these leaves also to remove the brown spots, or if it is better to let them be and accept the unsightly spotting?:
Now that the weather is nice and fair outside (not raining much either here in Montreal Canada), should I put this plant on my balcony and let it get natural sun and rainwater, to heal it well, or will this make things worse for the plant?
If kept indoors, is it best to keep it right near a window or a few feet away from one?
Well the healthy stalks look pretty healthy - the leaves all look fine, don't worry if you pruned it properly. Prune it to how you like it; although I don't know if it was necessary to cut the brown bits off.
As for the not so healthy stalk, you could leave it be and see if it improves, throw it away, or take it out of the main pot and repot it in a pot of it's own and see how it does.
I don't think dracaena are that fussy about light conditions, they tolerate shade. I have 3 plants, one is in almost permanant shade, although it's right next to the window, one is maybe 2 m away from the window (North facing) so it gets some sunlight and the other is further away from the window and will get some light but will mainly be in shade. They are all growing well, they just grow more slowly than one that has been in the light. My bf has one which used to sit right in his South facing window, and it grew really quickly and quite spindly. Dracaena are sold as indoor plants here, we are zone 8 or 9, I don't know about the area where you live.
I have a couple of smaller D. marginata's but mine stay outside on my deck all year, in very bright light so if you have a bright window that would be the perfect location. They do okay in low light situations, they just don't seem to grow as fast. If kept indoors just make sure you don't over water or you will end up with root rot and rotting canes/branches. I've found they like to be kept on the dry side but that could just be because of my location. It's very humid here so there's lots of moisture in the air almost year round.
I also have a D. marginata Tricolor: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/59787/ planted in the yard. I covered it with an old blanket when we had cold nights over the winter and it even survived a couple of nights with temperatures in the 20's so they seem to be very forgiving plants! Years ago I had a very large one that grew so tall it touched the top of the screened pool enclosure and began to curve ... a lot of people like that effect of curving branches but I chopped mine off and rooted the cuttings. It's normal for lower leaves to die and fall off, I just pull them off when they get ratty looking.
I find this plant easy to propagate by just cutting off a branch and sticking it in soil or even in water ... I have rooted it both ways. When you cut a stalk/branch it will eventually put out new growth at the sides of the cut branch, showing up as little nodes at first and then recognizable new little branches. Here's a picture of Tricolor growing in my yard. This plant took a beating last week when we had 23" of rain and some high winds. This photo shows some of the "ratty" looking leaves.
