Question
Hello!

I bought my yucca cane about one year ago from Home Depot.  There are two stalks, a taller and one half its size, housed in a plastic pot approximately 5 inches in width and depth.  It has never been fertilized, is watered once a week with city tap water, and is still in the original "pot".  Its current location is a south facing window with direct sunlight and next to a base heater.

Over the last six months its condition has deteriorated.  Its original location did not expose it to any direct sunlight, it was however in a very sunny room.  The leaves began drying up and turning brown relatively gradually on both stalks.  Now, the smaller stalk is completely dead and appears to be rotted through.  The larger stalk has four shoots, the largest shoot seems to possibly be brown in the center with no new growth.  Two of the shoots have had new growth but it appears to be deformed the leaves began to intertwine with each other.  The fourth shoot has new apparently normal growth.  I Have emailed image to .

I purchased a new ceramic pot of the same size and wanted to transplant the living stalk.

Do you have any recommendations or suggestions as to what may have happened?

I sure hope for a recovery, thanks for your time.

Shanti

Answer
Shanti,

I suspect that at times your yucca has been overwatered and other times underwatered which has caused the deformities along with not getting enough sun. It needs to be treated like a desert plant and given lost of sunlight from that southfacing window and watered about once every 2 weeks in the winter and once a week in the summer only. The base heatr is another problem. It would be beneficial if you could turn it off or use something to deflect the heat away from the plant such as a foil covered piece of metal.

The most important thing is that it gets lsun from dawn to dusk. It should be near a window with the drapes or blinds oopen all day. Your new pot should have a drain hole with a drain tray andd it should never be left sitting with water in the drain tray for long periods. If you have more questions write again, Good luck.

Darlene