Newbie Help Needed - Bottle Palm Issue (?)

[JDSwim]

Transferred recently purchased 7 gallon Bottle Palm into slightly larger container, and am now concerned that the leave's bent-over ends and/or slightly brown ends indicate issues (too much water, not enough water, transfer shock, etc...?)

For reference, when I first transferred it five days ago, I merely used the soil that was in the nursery's 7 gallon pot, and added some mulched potting soil around the perimeter where there was a gap.  However, I failed to include a rock base, so drainage was likely an issue.  I watered (maybe about 1 gallon) each afternoon on two consecutive days (top soil within the pot was dry prior to watering).  Being concerned about the prospective lack of drainage, I removed the palm and pot on the third day, then added a rock base below the pot, and added pea gravel to the bottom of the pot, then replaced the palm with original nursery soil and the same mulched potting soil.

I then watered that day and the next (again, maybe 1 gallon or a little less each time).  I did not water today, and took the pictures about 6:30 PM tonight. 

The palm sees full sun (albeit through screen) about 7-8 hours each day.  Temperatures in our area of Florida since potting have been in the upper 80s / low 90s, with humidity in the high 80s%.  

On another note, I trimmed off the boots this morning, and think I did a decent job.

Hoping I'm just being a little paranoid.

Any and all help greatly appreciated!

 

[Jeff985]

All four of mine look like that and have for a long time. It’s not ideal, but I wouldn’t be concerned either. 

[Steve Mac]

I agree with Jeff, it sounds like you have done the right thing, the pics look good. 

I don't think that you can do anymore now than give it a bit of time to settle in.

And welcome to the forum.

[JDSwim]

How about watering schedule and amount?

I've seen very different answers in my searches, one of which suggested what seems to be a ludicrous number of gallons equivalent to the pot, meaning I would be putting about 8 gallons onto it each day for the first two weeks.  Sounds like waterboarding to me, poor little palm.

[Steve Mac]

Joel,  basically they are slow growing and reasonably drought tolerant, so don't worry too much, I think that it will be fine.

Unless heat or cold kills it, I don't know your climate. Maybe a local can confirm?

[Merlyn]

On 7/21/2020 at 9:01 PM, JDSwim said:

How about watering schedule and amount?

I've seen very different answers in my searches, one of which suggested what seems to be a ludicrous number of gallons equivalent to the pot, meaning I would be putting about 8 gallons onto it each day for the first two weeks.  Sounds like waterboarding to me, poor little palm.

I've seen articles published that claimed you needed to water palms in pots every day with an equal amount of water as the pot size.  So if you had a 3 gallon pot you'd better give it 3 gallons of water per day every day.  The person claimed that this information came straight from South FL nurseries.  I laughed when I saw that article, as it's probably the worst advice I've heard of for almost any palm.  That would kill a lot of palms and waste an immense amount of water.

Anyway, I have a couple of Bottle palms in patio pots, similar in size and shape to yours.  A couple of them were out of range of my "palm nursery area" drip sprinklers, and they yellowed a bit in the May "Sahara sandstorm" heat and drought.  Normally they are fine with just Orlando-area rainfall, but the ones with a little supplemental water in times of drought look a whole lot nicer and grow faster.  As a ballpark guess my nursery area ones get maybe 0.25 gallons per morning from the drip sprinklers.  My Bottles and Spindles in the ground get varying amounts from either a dripper (0.5 gallons per palm) or in my "tropical area" that gets absolutely drowned every morning.  So they are pretty tolerant of either over or underwatering.