Question

dying flowers  

soft caudex   I am in Tampa Bay area of FL. I got 2 desert roses which are over 15 years old from a local person about 4 weeks ago and this is the first time I have desert rose. When I got home I put one of them into a clay pot with original soil(another one I had with an original clay pot) and they looked beautiful. Two days later started raining very hard and rained very often in the past 3 weeks or with very little sun. One of the desert roses leaves are getting yellow and falling off. Another one the caudex  is soft and flowers are dying. The back of the leaves are with lots dark spots. I took it out from the pot and cleaned the roots. I put it in a new clay pot with perlite only trying to support it and tried to let the roots yesterday. The upper part of the caudex was a bit firmer than yesterday that I could feel this morning but the bottom part closes to the roots still soft. What can I do to save these beautiful plants? Please help. Thank you.

Answer
Dear Melody, Sorry for the delay in answering your question, but the rain has been knocking out the Internet a bit here.  The most important thing to do is to immediately get these desert rose into soil and keep them in the pots.  The best soil for these plants is a drier soil that doesn't stay too wet.  If you can find something like Miracle Gro Palm and Cactus soil, that is a good one, but if they are already planted, I wouldn't move them.  Make sure that the plants drain well, and if you have them sitting in a saucer, make sure to empty them after watering or rain.  They just don't like to be in a lot of water, and the only thing wrong with your desert rose is that they have gotten too wet.  If you expect a lot of rain, I would let them get wet enough to soak the pot, and then go ahead and pull them out of the rain.  If it is wet and cloudy for a week, they will lose leaves, but that doesn't mean anything is really wrong with them.  It just means they don't like to be so saturated.  These plants actually do grow in hot desert like conditions so you can go a pretty long time without watering these plants.  They store water in their fleshy trunks.  If you are really concerned about fungus, you can spray them with a fungicide containing proprioconozole, but I think that would be overkill.  Just get them in dirt, keep them dry and in the bright light to sun and they will come around.  Once again sorry it took me so long to respond.  I hope this information helps, but don't hesitate to write back if you have more questions.  Good luck, Melissa