Majesty palm yellowing can be worrying as your lush green tree is gradually losing its value.
This happens because of reasons such as insufficient light, lack of nutrients, overwatering and others.
Even though your yellowing tree can get you worried, you can easily fix it by reading the tips in this article.
Contents
Why Are Your Majesty Palm Leaves Turning Yellow?
The reason why your majesty palm leaves are yellowing could be the result of insufficient light, sunburn, being overfed, having a lack of nutrition, or not receiving enough water. In addition, you may even want to check the acidity of the soil, because the latter would cause yellowing as well.
– Insufficient Light
The first thing that should come to your mind when you see that the leaves of your majesty palms are becoming yellow should be the light exposure of the plants. Chlorophyll in plant leaves which is responsible for the green color of the leaves cannot grow in the absence of light.
Another way to tell that your majesty palms need more light is when you find them stretching to the sun. To help your plant leaves become green and shiny, they must have enough exposure to light. This means that you must carefully select the location of your majesty palms, especially for indoor plants.
– Sunburn
Just like lack of light, sunburn can also cause chlorosis. However, in this case, the leaves will become brown and also feel very dry. Sunburn is common in majesty palms that grow under direct sunlight for too long. You may want to protect your indoor majesty palms from the hot sun of the summer afternoon.
One way to tell that your majesty palms have sunburn is to examine the trees that have chlorosis. If the trees closer to the source of light have chlorosis while the ones farther look okay, it is sunburn. However, insufficient light is the cause of the reverse is the case.
– Lack of Nutrients
After insufficient light, the next major cause of chlorosis (i.e. the yellowing of leaves) is nutrient deficiency. The major nutrient that usually causes chlorosis if your majesty palms are lacking it is nitrogen. Plants utilize nitrogen to produce green leaves and other green organs. When trees lack nitrogen, their leaves will become yellow.
Asides from nitrogen, other nutrients such as iron and magnesium can cause chlorosis in your majesty palms if the trees are lacking them. This is why you need to properly feed your majesty palms with the right majesty palm fertilizer. It would also help if you grow your trees on any nutrient-rich substrate.
– Over-Feeding
Even if your trees are not lacking any nutrients, they can also get chlorosis if you overfeed them. The signs of overfeeding in your majesty palms are similar to that of sunburn. Too many nutrients in the soil can prevent your palm trees from absorbing water easily and it can cause the leaves to dry up quickly.
You want to make sure that you only feed your majesty palms occasionally instead of regularly. Also, do not use fresh manure like cow dung as it can burn the tree roots and leaves. If you must feed your trees with organic nutrients, use compost or well-rotted manure.
– Lack of Water
What happens if you do not give your majesty palms enough water? The plant will look weak, it will start to die and it will surely have yellow or pale leaves. Watering plants is important if you want to keep them alive, so do not fail to water them when you should.
You want to water the trees when the soil surface is dry but the soil is still wet below. This can help the palm tree’s roots to stay in consistently moist soil. It would help if you amend the majesty palm soil with vermiculite so that the soil can retain water and not quickly run dry.
– Root Rot
What happens if you overwater your majesty palms? The substrate will become too saturated, the majesty palm tree’s roots will start to suffocate and die and while they decay, the root rot fungi will attack other healthy roots. Root rot is associated with overwatering, so you do not want to give your trees too much water.
To avoid overwatering them, you should ensure that their pots or containers have drainage holes. Also, the potting mix or soil should drain water quickly (while retaining a healthy amount for the plant’s roots). Note that you may need to change the substrate if your plants have root rot.
– Unsuitable Soil pH
The soil pH is one of the most under-looked soil qualities when growing plants and trees. If the pH is too high or low, the roots of your majesty palms will not absorb nutrients from the soil easily because the nutrients may not easily move into the plant roots. This can lead to the deficiency of nutrients and in turn, lead to chlorosis because the plants will starve from nutrients.
Majesty palms prefer a low pH range starting from 6.0 to 6.5. As a slight-acidic soil-loving plant, it is important that you grow your majesty palm only in slight-acid substrates. You should amend the substrate to give your majesty palms their preferred soil pH.
– Disease and Pest Attack
Pests such as mildew, fungi, fungus gnats, and spider mites can attack your majesty trees and they can lead to your plants producing weak yellow or brown leaves. Note that pests usually attack weak plants and not healthy majesty palms, so the presence of pests in your majesty palms signifies that your trees may be sick.
You can only find fungus gnats in the substrate of majesty palms that you are overwatering. This means that if you see chlorosis in your majesty palms and also find fungus gnats around it, the exact cause is too much watering. Please get rid of fungus gnats and other pests with plant-safe pesticides.
How To Fix Your Yellowing Majesty Palms
Even though you may be very worried that your trees are yellow or brown, you can fix it. To fox your yellowing majesty palms, make use of the following steps:
– Find the Cause of Your Majesty Palm Yellowing
The very first thing that you want to do is to find the exact reason why your majesty trees are becoming yellow. Your trees may become yellow for one, two, or more reasons stated above, so you need to know which one so that you can know how to treat it. Treating your majesty palm with the solution of a different cause can make things worse.
Remember that the major reason why your majesty palms can become yellow is insufficient light as the green coloration of their leaves depends on light. You want to check the location of your majesty palm as well as review your method of caring for the plant to make sure that you know the exact reason why it is being yellow.
– Grow Your Majesty Palms in the Right Growing Conditions
Here are the requirements of majesty palms if you want to grow them so that they do not become yellow:
- Water: To avoid overwatering your majesty palms, wait for 2 inches of the surface of their substrate to become dry before you water them again. Also, ensure that the pot has drainage holes.
- Light: Majesty palms love their sunlight, so ensure that they get six to eight hours of sunlight daily. In the summer, you should protect them from the hot afternoon sun.
- Nutrients: Search for a specific fertilizer for your trees. The fertilizer usually has a ratio of 8-2-12-4 (N, P, K, and M). Feed your trees once every two months in the active growing season.
- Humidity: As a lover of humidity, majesty palms need more than 50 percent humidity. 65-80 percent humidity levels are optimal.
- Temperature: Ensure that your trees grow at 65 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Remember the requirements of your majesty palms so that you do not face any problems while growing the trees.
-Change the Majesty Palm Substrate
This step is very important, especially in cases that involve the substrate of your trees. If your majesty palms are becoming yellow because of overwatering, root rot, soil pH, and any disease, they cannot heal completely in the same substrate and you may find them yellowing again even after treating them.
To treat the majesty palms, you have to first change their substrate to a new one. If you’d love to reuse the previous substrate, ensure to bake it first so that you can eliminate the chances of a pest or bacterial attack. When repotting your trees, please be careful with their roots.
– Examine and Treat the Roots
If you see the need to change your majesty palm substrate, you should use this opportunity to examine and treat its roots for diseases (if any). For example, if your majesty palms were yellow because of root rot, you would surely see a lot of unhealthy and dead roots. It is not up to you to treat them.
While there are so many products to treat your majesty palm roots in gardening stores, you must prune off the dead roots. These dead roots serve as shelter and food to fungi and other microbes, so you need to remove them. Also, it would help if you rinse the majesty palm roots with running water before you replant them.
– Prune off the Old and Weak Leaves From Your Majesty Palm
And now, it is time to bring your plants back to their former glory and beauty. Some leaves that turned yellow will not go back to their former beauty. Also, some leaves that turn brown might already be dead. This means that these leaves do not need to remain in your majesty palm tree anymore.
To help bring your majesty palms back to their beautiful selves, use sterilized pruning scissors or knives to remove the dead, brown, weak, and yellow leaves. Asides from the sake of beauty, removing these leaves also helps to prevent your majesty trees from sending wasted energy to those leaves.
Conclusion
Now you know so many reasons why your majesty palms can become yellow as well as what you can do to fix them, with the easy tips in this article, right?
Make sure you follow the steps to bring your majesty palms with yellowing leaves back to their former beautiful selves, and remember:
- If your majesty palms have chlorosis or yellow/brown leaves, the first thing that you should check is their light exposure.
- Lack of nitrogen is another major cause of chlorosis. Nitrogen and light are responsible for the growth of chlorophyll in the leaves of your majesty palms.
- Other reasons why your majesty palm tree leaves may be becoming yellow are soil pH, disease, and lack of water.
- Before treating, you must first know the exact reason why they are turning brown or yellow.
- If your majesty palms are turning yellow in color because of root rot or other diseases, ensure to change their substrate as well as treat their roots.
Congratulations as your yellowing majesty palms are now restored to their former beautiful selves.
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