Crown rotting on Jubaea Chilensis

[BeaumontTropics]

I read somewhere recently that the "Jubzilla" as MattyB called it, can suffer from too much water on the crown. Should this plant only be irrigated from below, and has anyone had this rotting effect happen to their Juby? I know some palms, (queens and young butias) seem to really thrive from "overhead" watering. Maybe it's the whole "natural" rainfall thing they like, I don't know? Let me know what you palmers' think! I appreciate it! -eric

[sarasota alex]

Eric, I try not to overhead water anything. From what I heard (I think here on the board) even water loving species like Ravenea rivularis can suffer from that. I think inability to tolerate heavy annual rainfall is one of the reasons why it's very hard to grow a Jubaea in Florida or the tropics in general.

[BS Man about Palms]

I believe most palms that don't come from a humid place would prefer to keep a dry crown. I suspect heat and humidity does in most of the Jubeas in Florida.

So, as a rule, I'd would just water at the base and occasionally spritz the leaves when hot..

[PalmGuyWC]

I seem to have the perfect climate for Jubaeas, but for the past few years I've been "playing" with a couple of plants that were seedlings when I got them. They have been difficult to grow up, and most of the new fronds were half brown and they looked very sick. I don't water the crowns in the summer, but they get regular winter rain. Now that they are larger they seem to have grown out of the funk, whatever it was. I've heard that Jubaeas are difficult to get up from the seedling stage. Mine are 5 gal sized now.

Dick

[chris.oz]

Eric,

I can agree with Dick about getting Jubs up to any decent stage.

I never had any problem germinating and getting the majority to 2-3 leaf stage.

But there is a continual attrition of numbers and now that my 10 remaining 5-6 YOA jubs [ about 10%]

have a base the size of a baseball, I dont want to lose any more

Now they are at this stage and still slow, I will be increasing he feeding rate to try to get them to accelerate.

After all that, I dont water them overhead at all. Only ever water the soil around them

Chris

[quaman58]

I haven't really figured out a pattern to the bud rot that affects the occasional palm. I can't pin it down to a particular species (like Jubeas), or time of year, or overhead watering, or anything else for that matter. I used to think that if a palm was growing quickly, there was little worry about bud rot, but now & again it occurs in the midst of the growing season when the palm had been previously rockin'. Overhead sprinkling is certainly a potential culprit. But I can't see the pattern that convinces me that overhead watering is necessarily evil; although I try to avoid it whem plants are dormant. No need to tempt fate..

[BeaumontTropics]

thank you all for you input,

but if the palm has some size to it, for example, my jubaea is in a 20 gallon, probably some six/seven inches around at the bottom, and fairly substantial leafs on the fronds. Given the fact that I live out here

in good ol' windy, dusty, arid beaumont in so cal, if I never overhead water anything, the leafs become saturated with dust! To the point where I fear the leafs can't breathe, and thus suffocate and eventually, completely desiccate. Not so much in the winter, where there is enough cumulative rainfall to keep the dust levels down, even when the winds pick up. Come mid may until early october, that's another story.

This is the jubaea i'm presently worried about:

[mjff]

I wouldn't worry about washing the leaves off occasionally during the warmer months, but I don't think I would top water it twice a week either. You could probably get away with spraying the leaves twice a month to keep them clean, especially if it is hot and dry. Try to do it early in the morning, as opposed to the evening, so the water will dry instead of sitting down in the crown all night.