Posted by Tom Broome on 5/16/2008, 12:11 pm, in reply to "Sago roots rotted"
64.12.117.67
--Previous Message--
: Hi, Tom,
:
: What a great forum, I'm very glad I
: found it! Your Sago knowledge and
: advice is a tremendous help,
: especially to those of us who are
: new to trying Cycads (and I stress
: the word "trying.")
:
: Here's the problem I'm having:
:
: I had my once-healthy Sagos potted
: in too heavy of a soil mixture, and
: the roots are rotted from being too
: wet. If I cut the roots off
: completely and pot each bulb in
: lighter soil (or perlite), would it
: eventually grow new roots? I was
: thinking of taking a little bit of
: the flesh(?) off the bottom of the
: bulb, dusting it with fungicide and
: then rooting powder before potting.
: The bulbs themselves feel firm, not
: soft, so I'm hoping I can still save
: these guys.
:
: Thanks for your help!
: rebecca
First of all, thanks for the compliments. I get so many people (not everyone though) asking me questions in this forum and in private e-mails and once I answer their questions, I never hear anything from them again and not even a thank you. You made my day today.
You can make the plants come back no problem. What you want to do is remove most if not all the leaves on the plant because those leaves pull energy and mopisture out of the stem when there are no roots to pump anything back up into the plant. When the plant is going good again, it will put out new leaves when it is ready. You want to cut back the roots until there is good looking materail and not rotted, nasty looking material. I will stop there and for really good details, I will send you to the place where I have my articles. Go to my website, that is linked in the header. Go to the article section and then the most asked questions article. You will see the details on doing offsets. I would treat these like offsets, but you don't have to carve up the whole stem, all you are doing is starting new roots, but the basic procedure would be the same. If you had some rot that got into the stem, then I would say to also read the article "never throw away a cycad" for extra insight.
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