Ponytail Palm Care
Ponytail Palm Care
Ponytail palms, also known as “bottle palms,” take these names from the top and bottom of the plant. The leaves that spring from the top of the plant roughly resemble a pony’s tail. And what can often become a very bulbous bottom part of the main trunk usually resembles a “bottle.” Hence the dual common names for this plant, known to horticulturalists as “Beaucarnea recurvata.”
Tips for ponytail palm care involve some neglect, along with periods of intense attention to detail. Some say that they are perfect for beginners—perhaps for beginners with a tiny bit of ambition to examine the plant every now and then. It’s a common houseplant with an uncommon look, so it’s worth the little extras included in tips for ponytail palm care.
Let’s start at the very bottom and work our way up through the care tips for ponytail palms. Some indoor gardeners place a simple coffee filter over the drainage hole on the inside bottom of the plant pot. This helps to hold in the soil when you water your plant the first few times, yet the filter allows drainage into the saucer of the plant pot.
Since tips for ponytail palm care call for well-drained soil and these plants cannot thrive in soggy soil, the bottom of the plant pot should be filled with some gravel—perhaps an inch or so. You can purchase small bags of gravel meant for indoor plants at your local garden center. This is the first layer: simply drainage.
In a separate container, mix 2 parts loam, 2 parts coarse sand, and 1 part peat moss. Break up the chunks and mix until you have blended it all. This most important of care tips for ponytail palms requires coarse builders’ sand, and not the soft sand you find on a beach or in your child’s sandbox. You can find this, too, in small houseplant-sized bags. If you consult an expert at your garden center, perhaps she can suggest a growing mix already blended and ready to use directly out of the bag.
This mixture forms the next layer in your horsetail palm’s pot. Since you’re attempting a transplant here, be sure that the plant is set at the same ground level in your new planting mix as it was in the old pot. Now water it in. Since this plant is very slow growing, you will only need to water roughly every three weeks. Ponytail palms are drought-tolerant and less water is better than more.
Since summer is the real growth period for most houseplants, another of the care tips for ponytail palms is to give your plant just one dose of fertilizer during summer or when you notice it putting out new growth.
The last of the tips for ponytail palm care: search the leaves for mealy bugs and wipe them off with alcohol-soaked cotton. If the plant is over-run with bugs, if this fails put the ponytail palm out on the curb for pickup.
Ponytail palms, also known as “bottle palms,” take these names from the top and bottom of the plant. The leaves that spring from the top of the plant roughly resemble a pony’s tail. And what can often become a very bulbous bottom part of the main trunk usually resembles a “bottle.” Hence the dual common names for this plant, known to horticulturalists as “Beaucarnea recurvata.”
Tips for ponytail palm care involve some neglect, along with periods of intense attention to detail. Some say that they are perfect for beginners—perhaps for beginners with a tiny bit of ambition to examine the plant every now and then. It’s a common houseplant with an uncommon look, so it’s worth the little extras included in tips for ponytail palm care.
Let’s start at the very bottom and work our way up through the care tips for ponytail palms. Some indoor gardeners place a simple coffee filter over the drainage hole on the inside bottom of the plant pot. This helps to hold in the soil when you water your plant the first few times, yet the filter allows drainage into the saucer of the plant pot.
Since tips for ponytail palm care call for well-drained soil and these plants cannot thrive in soggy soil, the bottom of the plant pot should be filled with some gravel—perhaps an inch or so. You can purchase small bags of gravel meant for indoor plants at your local garden center. This is the first layer: simply drainage.
In a separate container, mix 2 parts loam, 2 parts coarse sand, and 1 part peat moss. Break up the chunks and mix until you have blended it all. This most important of care tips for ponytail palms requires coarse builders’ sand, and not the soft sand you find on a beach or in your child’s sandbox. You can find this, too, in small houseplant-sized bags. If you consult an expert at your garden center, perhaps she can suggest a growing mix already blended and ready to use directly out of the bag.
This mixture forms the next layer in your horsetail palm’s pot. Since you’re attempting a transplant here, be sure that the plant is set at the same ground level in your new planting mix as it was in the old pot. Now water it in. Since this plant is very slow growing, you will only need to water roughly every three weeks. Ponytail palms are drought-tolerant and less water is better than more.
Since summer is the real growth period for most houseplants, another of the care tips for ponytail palms is to give your plant just one dose of fertilizer during summer or when you notice it putting out new growth.
The last of the tips for ponytail palm care: search the leaves for mealy bugs and wipe them off with alcohol-soaked cotton. If the plant is over-run with bugs, if this fails put the ponytail palm out on the curb for pickup.
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