Florida Palm Trees

Question: Hi! Last year I bought a Majesty Palm Tree. It’s a regular indoor palm. After a few months of living, the leaves of the plant started becoming brown and dying off. I did that root pruning, but the plant hasn’t become better. It started as a very bushy plant and now has only 2 branches left. How can I salvage this palm?

Answer: Majesty Palm is not the best choice for the indoor palm. Kentia Palm grows much better indoors. Majesty Palm cannot live in the pot for too long. Max few years. After that, it starts slowly to decline. How old is your palm? I don’t think that your palm liked the root pruning. If you damage palm roots it might weaken the palm and give a great opportunity for the insects to attack.

Majesty Palm needs well drained soil. If you live in the warm climate, your Majesty palm might do much better outside. But if you damaged root system too much, transplanting it outside not going to help. Don’t let it sit in the water. Read my articles on how to plant and take care of palm trees. ~Susan Brian

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Question: Hi Susan. My palm tree is dying! I transplanted a double stem mature Pygmy Date Palm, about 6ft tall into the earth in front of my home. Currently, we are having a drought and I realized that the leaves on one of the stems started the wilt and droop very baldly. I cut away all of the drooping leaves and ensure that it is getting an adequate supply of water daily. It doesn’t have much leaves left!!! I also added some fertilizer spikes to the soil. I don’t want to loose it, but I am concern if it will survive. HELP!

Answer: Cutting all the drooping leaves was a huge mistake. You palm didn’t like it. Drooping leaves usually means not enough water. It is very easy to find out by checking the moist level of your soil. Palm trees need to be deep watered, meaning that you need to water them for a longer period of time providing very little water. Instead of watering it fast with a large amount of water. That way, you give the soil enough time to absorb all the water.

Also, since you have a drought, it’s is a good idea to add few inches of mulch to help the soil to stay moist. For more information read my article on watering palm trees.

I am guessing your palm tree is getting full sun. Poor palm is not used to full sun since it’s been growing indoors all this time. You need to cover it with a screen or a plastic to decrease the light levels. Stop fertilizing it. Hope this helps. ~Susan Brian

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Question: Leaves of my King Palm are turning brown! It is few months old. I got it 3 weeks ago. I am following the instructions, planted it in full sun and watering it every other day. What is wrong with my palm tree? Why is my King Palm turning brown? Thanks.

Answer: It is not unusual for palms to experience “transplant shock“. When palm is transplanted from the pot into the ground it loses part of the roots. That is why you need to supply it with a lot of water until it grows new roots. It takes few month for the palm to establish. You need to water a new planted palm every day for the first week and than every other day for the second. See if the soil is moist enough. Also, your tree is way to young to sit on the full sun in the middle of the summer. You probably burned all the leaves.

Create a cover. Take 4 sticks and put a plastic cover on top. Make few holes in the plastic every 2 weeks to allow more sun to get through. It will help to adjust your palm to a higher light levels.  ~Susan Brian

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Question: Hello. I live in southern California and I’m trying to save my palm trees that are brown and look dead. How can I revive them? I think I over pruned them, and put the Palm food pebbles too close to the trunk and caused the roots to burn. I tried fixing the problem by watering the palms more, and putting Palm Steaks into the ground as the directions told me to and I still do not see any healing to my palm trees.

How do I revive my palm trees? We are trying to sell our house, and I am desperate to get my Palm trees healed. Any help would be much appreciated. I was lucky to find such an informative site on Palm trees as yours after searching for info on this issue for a few days. Thanks for your time.

Answer: It sounds like you have multiple problems. Pruning too many leaves can send the palm into a shock. You need to give it some time to recover. There is not much you can do to reduce the stress. Applying too much fertilizer can cause a root burn and kill your palm. It is usually the “fast release” formula that can do the damage. If you use a slow release fertilizer, it should not damage the roots.

If you over-fertilized your tree, you need to water the fertilized portion of the soil to flush out the fertilizer. There is a danger of over-watering your palm, but if you have fast draining soil, it should not be a problem. After flushing out the fertilizer, return to a normal watering schedule. Applying more fertilizer at this point will make matters only worse. Your palm is already damaged and will need some time to heal. ~Susan Brian

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Question: Hi. We bought a house about a year ago that has a King Palm in a front planter. We asked a nursery what we need to do. Its beautiful. We did not want anything to happen to it. That was the problem. The told us to feed it with Jobbs Palm plant food and they take hardly any water. So we cut back on the water to only two minutes every other day (sprinklers).

Now all of the fronds are turning brown and even the new one emerging from the top is brown at the tip(not open yet). We did get a new flower bud that opened with all of the tiny little ‘seeds’. I’m afraid we are going to lose it. What can we do? More water? Even less water? Thank you for your help.

Answer: You need provide your palm with enough water. Palm trees like moist well drained soil. Check to see  electronic soil moister meter to see how moist the soil is. How big is your palm? If your palm can fit into a 10 gallon container, it needs 10 gallons of water. If it is 15 gallon palm tree, it needs 15 gallons of water. There are different ways you can water your palm. Deep watering works the best. Deep watering is when you slowly drip water for a long period of time instead of dumping all of the water at once. This will give soil more time to absorb the water. ~Susan Brian

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