Q. Canary Island date Palm with one or two fronds browning and dying. What to do?
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Canary Island Date palm with individual frond death |
A. Please be aware of that Canary Island date palms can grow
to 50 or 60 feet high so they are too large, in the long run, for residential
landscapes. These are huge plants. But these palms grow slowly so it will grow
slowly. There are several things that could cause the fronds of this palm to
die. The most serious is a disease called Fusarium. You can Google the images
and look to see if it resembles Fusarium or not. If the palm tree has Fusarium
disease it will most likely not recover but it will get worse in time. If you
think the palm trees are infected with Fusarium it’s best to remove them before
they get larger and more expensive to remove. The other problem with Fusarium
is that it contaminates the soil so few trees can be planted exactly in the
same hole. It’s best to plant something close to it but not in the hole.
Fusarium is caused by wounds to the palm tree oftentimes caused by improper
pruning and sanitation of the pruning equipment and then weakening the palm
tree by watering it too often.
The most common problem facing people growing Canary Island
date palms in the Las Vegas desert are not amending the soil at the time of planting
and watering too often. Watering too often keeps the soil wet and weakens the
palm. Pruning these palm trees with dirty pruning equipment causes the disease
to enter the plant and watering too often or poor drainage makes the plant
unhealthy.
What can you do?
If you are convinced this palm probably has
Fusarium disease, then remove it while it is still small and young. Not many trees
and shrubs are resistant to Fusarium. It’s a very aggressive and nasty disease.
Make sure the soil around the plant drains water, do not watered too often but
if you are watering too much then give it too much water rather than too often.
These can be expensive plants. It might be an expensive educational lesson.
I recently plants a date palm, in March. The soil is loose in the top foot or so, but there's quite a bit of caliche. The yard was in lawn for decades and caliche built to a pretty thick layer. I've been using some sulfur to counteract it. But, question, how much and how often should the tree be irrigated it's first year?
I am not sure what you are calling caliche. Caliche is built up over hundreds of years of light rain, dissolving the calcium carbonate in the soil and depositing it in layers or as pebbles. If a caliche layer is present then the water just sits on top of this layer for days until it evaporates. Sometimes these caliche layers are deep in the soil and sometimes they are shallow. Regardless, if it is present then a hole must be punched through it for water drainage or a significant amount of mounding of soil has to be done on top of it to provide enough depth for roots to grow.