We have a nice pampas grass that seems to be rotting in the middle. It is bery wet and we can easily pull stems out of the middle of the plant. Whats the best reatment?
Replant in a sandy, well-draining soil and then water-starve it a bit. Pampas grass comes from a desert-type environment, and it hates to have its feet too wet.
As far as I know this is normal. I am a professional gardener and I see this all the time. You can either devide it or clean out the circle add some soil and plant a tree in it. it looks really cool when you do this.
i too have the same problem and we live at the beach in westport wa. where just about the only thing here we have is SAND so it should be ok although when it rains it really rains here and now there are bees inside the stock area and i want to clean it out but i dont want to get stung either-the stocks seem to be rotting - i dont know what to do about this problem i wondered if because the neighbors have a wild rose bush right on the other side of the pampas grass because these were around 12 -15 feet tall and looked good now you see more rose than you do the pampas grass could the rose bush be killing the pampas grass? you can hardly tell they are there anymore -all you see is rose climbers all over everywhere-contact rainelbeck@comcast.net as i am no good on this computer stuff just to get to this spot was a great feat for me-thanks
I haven't learned why some of these plants sometimes go bald in the center but what I do know is that the rather high number of spontaneous Pampas grass seedlings that have appeared in recent years in this area are almost invariably growing in places where they would be getting more moisture than elsewhere on the same sites. The most frequent habitat seems to be the edges of highways, where large volumes of water would be sheeting off extensive areas of pavement during rainy periods. Other than that the species is showing a tendency to pop up in stream beds, specifically where the water would be backing up before entering a running culvert beneath a road. They grow right down in the bed. Perhaps the first place I saw this was in Seattle, where Fauntleroy Creek disappears beneath the road, across from the uphill end of the ferry dock. There the bowl-like section above the culvert was filled with a wavy-looking patch of multiple specimens that looked as though they would be clogging it. Possibly the recommendation to clear off old dead parts by setting the plants on fire also addresses the problem of them dying out in the middle.
Certainly burning off seems to remedy the problem here in Ecuador. And, as you've observed in the US, down here it populates the edges of the highways and in cleared fields where it's likely to get maximum water. By my observations, the central die-off coincides with the dry season, when the center of the grass is so clogged with growth and such that it literally chokes itself out of existence.... burning off removes the excess growth and allows it to breathe. What you're mimicking is the natural burn-off that occurs during lightning storms.
