I have recently recieved a corn plant as a gift. The only plants that I have ever successfuly kept alive are my ivies. I have done so far well with the corn plant. The tips of my plant have truned brown and crisp. So I did some looking online, and I read to trim off that part of the leaf. So I did, now it is turning yellow starting at the cut and moving toward the trunk. What should I do, cut again? Or leave it alone? How big of a pot should it be in? I think that the pot is to small. Please help! I love this plant and don't want to lose it. Thank You!
I found a picture on the internet that looked just like the one that I have. Dracaena fragrans is that the caption called it. Thank you! What do I do about the leaves? Trim or cut the whole leaf?
First deal with the cause - low humidity, and the best way would be to have a humidifier in the room. But if that's impractical, then put a big, wide plastic drainage saucer (as wide as the foliage spreads) under the pot, fill it with large pebbles or stones and fill the saucer with water, but ONLY to below the tops of the stones. In other words, don't ever let the pot bottom touch the water or it can wick it up and rot the roots. If you keep the water constant in the saucer, you should have no further trouble. THEN cut off the brown ends to just below (1/16" inch) the green parts - doing it into the green may cause more browning - and hopefully it won't come back. Also, try to avoid having A/C anywhere near the plant as it is very bad for most.
How big of a pot should it have? There are two stocks, one is about three feet and the other is about four foot tall. The are in one pot that is about a foot and a half tall and a foot across. Do I need to put them in a larger one? If so, what kind of soil do they like? I have read so many different things. Thank you for all of your help!
The only way to tell if they need repotting is to carefully get them out of the pots, on their sides on some plastic and see if the roots are seriously encircling the whole thing, or are starting to layer on the bottom, in which case you should repot. If there are a lot of roots on the bottom, very gently loosen them all around and see if you can bring them down enough to see how long they are and if there are a lot of long old woody ones with few new 'feeder' roots (threadlike shorter ones) coming off them, cut them back by a 1/3 and repot. If they are circling, it'll be harder to loosen them, but if some are easy, old and not supporting a lot of smaller new roots you can also them back somewhat. When you repot use potting soil, but add a lot of grit (small aquarium gravel) to the mix for good drainage. Don't layer pebbles on the bottom and make sure there are 1-2 good sized drain holes (not sitting in wet saucers all day but on the hum. trays). Make sure when you repot to fill in all little spaces between roots as you go. Don't have the new pot much larger than the old - they do better if a little 'cozy' than swimming.
Right now there is only two trunks. I would like to add a third one, or possibly start a third one. Can you start a corn plant from a cutting like you do an ivy? I have heard yes and no. I don't want to risk losing my plant.
From what I learned, Dracaenas start real easy from cutting of any size. All you have to do is chop a chunk of the trunk off and put it in dirt and, before too long, you have a new tree. The only problem is you will be sacrificing the foliage on one tree to start the new one. You can easily start them from seed as well. We have started them both ways. By the way, they are very prone to root rot and they can go without water for weeks before you water them again.
