Sago problems: Yellow areas, no growth - please help

Hi all, here is a pic of my sago. As you can see it has a lot of yellow areas. It never shows any growth. How can I help it? I will upload another pic in another question as it seems it has to be one at a time?

Here is another picture of it. Thanks for any help, I really want it to be healthy.

These are one of the slowest growing plants you will find. Ever. Dont be disheartend by that though~ the yellowing is from water variation; in the body of the palm is held a great deal of moisture. It is difficult to regulate this plant in a pot. You need to make sure there is a well drained mix of soil under the plant with a good mix above it. There is a special mix of plant food for Sagos as well. Careful monitering of the weight of the pot is the only way I have ever been able to regulate the amount of water in the pot, except for water meters which you can get at the gard departmant in all hardware stores, even walmart. They grow like one or two maybe 3 fronds a year, so don't expect a lot, and do not try to force or hurry it.
Good luck they are beautiful plants~
darren

Thank you for your advice, Darren. I'll look for the plant food and a water meter. Does the meter give you information about the water or does it do something to regulate it?

-Eve

its a small meter showing ona green to red scale how wet the bottom of the container still is. As the top of the soil is not important as the bottom...it has a small (rather delicate, dunno how this bit works, sorry) piece of metal around the stainless steel spike. You carfully push the stake toward the bottom of the container in many plaaces arond the pot to get a good reading of the soil all around the plant not just one spot, and that should help guage how much water to give. With Sagos less is more unless they are in a very sunny warm place or in ground with sandy soil. Anoth fact you may not know, that are not a true palm but related to pine trees in sme odd way, hence the needles; think of the ball of the palm as the trunk of a tree and how much water the tree can hold in the trunk.
One or two yelow needles is thirsty if, at the tip they are yellowed. Overwatering causes entire fronds (plural) to drop off...so go slowly and accept an occasional yellow needle, and like 6 hours of sun for sure. Your area/zone should allow a ground planting though I do not know your winters are like...follow up at a nursery too, when you but the plant H2o meter. The food comes only in a small bag (like 2 x 2 inches in size) and is usually hangin on a clip
Warm Regards
:D

Eve: How much light are you giving the sago? I know palms love high light. I drag mine outside as quickly as I can once spring is here.
Darren is right about the slow growth and moisture consistency. the meter he is talking about most just tell you a range of how moist it is. If you want to get more involved with it you can get other test kits but I think in your case just a good balance palm fertilizer with minor nutrients for palms is what you need. Being in California you should have a wealth of fertilizers to choose from. A good gardencenter that sells palms should be able to help you with what to buy. Walmart and the big box stores can be hit or miss. sometimes they have great knowledgable people but most of the time they are just watering the plants to keep them alive.
Good luck with the palm
Dave
Tulsa, Ok
zone 6b

darren I am sorry you only get a few fronds a year on your Sago. My Sago at the size above just had a second flush this year putting out 18 fronds. The Sago I have planted in the front yard is also on it's second flush of about 30 fronds. I don't find them to be a slow grower at all.....Eva...looking at your pictures the soil looks a little bone dry to me.......
Curt

because no one has mentioned it yet and i thought this should be cleared up, so i'll tell yall this. (plus from the posts above, it sounded like yall didn't know what i'm about to say.) a sago palm, despite the name, is not a palm it is a cycad,which is a type of conifer. they do resemble palms, but not elated. the reason you dont see growth is because they put out a flush of leaves all at once (most do) the one in my yard put out two flushes of leaves last year, and is working on its first flush for this year right now

This message was edited Jun 1, 2008 12:20 AM

Just a point of clarification. Yes Cycads are grouped with the gymnosperms but they are in fact unrelated to any other group of living plants. They are not conifers. While conifers are grouped with gymnosperms too, they are not a type of cycad.

ha thanks.... well maybe i should have said cone-ish thingamajigs....not conifers. but yeah thanks for catching my mistake

Hey, most people do not even know that a Cycad and Pine tree are actually related. :)

I do now.....thanks for the info weblnt.................:)

Thank you all for your help. (I did know the sago is not a palm and is related to pine trees, which makes me like it even more, as I'm from NY where there are lots of pine trees.) I hope to find that meter today and the right food for it. It could certainly be planted in the ground. There are sagos all over the place, in the ground. I just don't know where, exactly, I'd plant it and I sort of like it in the pot on the patio. Where it is now it gets lots of bright sunlight.

I wonder about the sagos in everyone's yards. Some of them look great and some are yellowed. I read somewhere that sagos should not be watered more than once a week but the ones in people's yards have to be getting watered every single day, the same as the lawns around them. I've been watering mine once a week.

I really appreciate the help, thanks so much!

Eve

Sagos are pretty adaptable creatures and can tolerate a lot of watering strategies. My friend has many and they are in his lawn where they get daily water... and I am amazed how huge and fast his are growing. I would say most people are much more likely to underwater one that overwater one (unless the plant is in poorly draining soil- something no cycad should be grown in.. yet Sagos can often adapt well even to that sort of soil... it just causes them to suffer and look bad periodically).

Yellow leaves may only be a sign of some impending change in the plant (not always a bad thing)- like getting ready to cone or branch or send out a new flush of leaves, or whatever... but a realy well grown plant with lots of fertilizer and water and without too severe temperature extremes rarely should develop yellow fronds unless the fronds are just aging.

Well, PalmBob and my CA friends, our worlds can be so different. Here in FL, overwatering Sagos is by far much more prevelant than underwatering. Hopefully all the last few year's watering restrictions (if obeyed) and droughts have taught us Floridians something - we never had to water our lawns every day to begin with.........

Not that PBob couldn't be corrent under the circumstance that the plant is stealing nutrients from old leaves to throw out new ones, but - Eve, if I were you I would give that puppy a good strong shot of a micronutrient product (based on your description of lack of new growth for some time), and you will likely have to do so periodically a couple of times a year...perhaps indefinitely depending on your soil and water quality. At the very least, such a product, properly applied, won't hurt anything (chelated or not) regardless the growth stage with this genus. To me, there is something related to nutrient levels in regard to the particular yellow flecking you have in the midlde of the leaves....can't put my finger on it right now.

What kind of soil is it planted in and what is your water source?

in Texas they are very under watered for the most pert. During the heat the Summer I go every two days but I also make sure mine are planted in a well drained spot.

Bear

Palmbob, as you are in Tarzana we have the exact same weather. Do you know of any sagos in pots? Maybe I shouldn't try to keep it in the pot? The pot drains very well, though. It is in a pretty generic garden potting soil (I can't remember exactly what it is, unfortunately) mixed with some cactus potting soil. Does your friend fertilize his?

Fauna4flora, as soon as I can I'll check in the garden stores and hopefully find someone knowledgeable to ask about a fertilizer. I'd really like to see it nice and green. The water source is my kitchen sink, or sometimes the garden hose but I don't think you meant that...:) The source for that water is the L.A. Department of Water and Power, which gets it from... the Colorado River? Northern California? No where local, that's for sure.

In any case, not a well. Used to have wells back East but not here.

I have a few Sagos in pots... have to water them basically every day here... though they don't die if I forget and leave them a week.

Also depends on what type of pot you have. Glazed ceramic, plastic, or terracotta. Now that I look back, it looks like you have plastic. Plastic is good for water retention, so is glazed ceramic(so long as there is good drainage with the soil). Terracotta that is unsealed, will cause planting medium to dry more quickly. Here in San Diego I water about once a week. I too have some yellowing on some sagos. I attributed it to reflected light from nearby windows. Probably kidding myself though. One is on a concrete patio that gets muy caliente in the summer, and the other with yellowing was by a stucco wall (more reflected heat) when it yellowed. The others, without yellowing, still get just as much, if not more sun. Only no reflected heat to go along with that full sun, more air movement. I'll post some pics later.
David

This one is in terracotta. See on the left side, the brown mark with the straight edge. I think it's from reflected light. The over all yellowing is probably under watering.
Edited to say. This is the second flush for this large pup separated from a larger male in September of '05. The first flush took 18 months.

This message was edited Jun 3, 2008 1:01 PM

This one in plastic was near a stucco wall. Flushed early spring.

All of these are pups I separated from larger sagos. The previous picture was her first flush after rooting. This one is also a first flush. Doing fine.

She looks a little yellow in the picture. Shes actually a light green. More water and a little fert? Also a first flush.

This is a second flush for this one. My first attempt with separating a pup from my neighbors female. The first flush produced two fronds. What a difference a year makes!

Along with regular water and fertilizer, have patience.

dave, thanks for those photos. Fascinating! It's in a plastic pot on a concrete patio. It gets very hot in the summer. Sometimes it's real windy, too.

Hey Guys!
All of the puppies I repotted in the Fall have given me a flush, and some are beginning a second flush.

Also, I'm conducting an experiment regarding leaf scale. I repotted two "teenagers" (about 1-1/2 yrs olds) and put a 2" layer of coffee grinds in the middle of my potting mix. The palms look good and healthy, and didn't show any signs of stress after the repotting. Hoping to get some of the caffeine into their systemic systems to see if this will thwart the leaf scale from sucking out their juices. I'll keep you posted!

Linda

Way to go Gymgirl! The one in my neighbors has some puppies around the base again. I was thinking to remove them soon, about the same time I did last year. Now though, hearing about your success, I'll just cut off the fronds they pushed. And remove them in the fall. Again, thats awesome news!
David

Thank you, Dave! They're all looking good. The leaves are hardening off and look like what you buy for $19.99 to $39.99 in the Lowe's and HOme Depot Garden Centers! I might have to put a "Sagos For Sale" sign on the front lawn!

I live in Palm Desert. I have 2 sagos in the shade on my front patio where temperatures are over 100 degrees in the summer. My 2 sagos have yellowed fronds all around the plant on the bottom rows. I have tried watering them daily and have withheld water for 1 week between waterings. Nothing seems to help. Any advice?

once they yellow, they will not turn green again. Yellow is the regular color for Sagos in intense arid sun, though watering regularly and fertilizing keeps the newest fronds as green as feasibly possible... but once they get fried by some hot sun, that's that, and they will stay yellow until they eventually brown and die. Almost all the Sagos in our neighborhood turned yellow this week (got to about 118F) if they were in full sun, at least on the leaves with the most exposure, and the oldest leaves as well if not being watered frequently (they need nearly daily water this time of year).

here is my little sago. It was a tiny three frond seedling when I got it. It only flushes in the spring. It is on the left of the EE's

Palmbob, just wanted to say something regarding your comment about the fronds staying yellow once yellowed. The cycads here in the Phoenix area turn yellow every summer with the intense heat but return to green once cooler temps and more moisture come. My cycas revoluta in my back yard turned yellow pretty badly in June. I have given it Epsom salts and it has been getting more water due to monsoon rains and it is starting to green back up.

This may be naive, but I thought you wanted to keep salt out of the soil. I have heard of adding Epsom salts to Queen palms. What else is there in Epsom salts that is of benefit to palms? Sorry bout the beginner quesrion.

David

magnesium, it is essentially a mineral and not really salt.

Are you saying that the magnesium is not a salt, or the Epsom salts?

Epsom salts are really a mineral magnesium sulfate. Not salt at all. It is used alot by gardeners for greening in yellowing plants. Some palm remedies purchased for yellowing palms are really epsom salts and sometimes a few other things as well. Some gardeners (as well as myself) add 1 tbs to gal of water and water the plants with it as needed. Originally it was mined in an area of England called Epsom.

Thanks. I know I've heard that before. Hopefully this time I'll remember :-)

OK you Sago Palm enthusiasts ... this is my rookie attempt at planting sago palm seeds. How long do I leave them in this wading pool before I transfer to individual pots...

This is the wading pool seeds .... planted on or about Dec 10, 2007 ...