Sick Sago

[Perito]

This Cycas revoluta was fine at first, but the last three times it has flushed, the leaves start browning when they are about half way open. I tried fungicides last year but perhaps I wasn't persistant enough. Does anyone have a cure or is it time to give up and plant something else? Any advise will be very much appreciated. Thanks! Perry

[Tulio]

Look like manganese deficiency.

[Mr Cycad]

Indeed, Tulio is on the money. Check you pH. It's most likely out if wack, and causing the lock up in nutrients. Also, what and how do you feed this plant?

[redant]

Seems to be at the base of a very large palm, competition for food might be a problem.

[Jeff Searle]

Look like manganese deficiency.

I would agree. And yes, maybe the larger palms are winning the battle for food on the plate.

Jeff

[Steve the palmreader]

Epson salts

[rprimbs]

This Cycas revoluta was fine at first, but the last three times it has flushed, the leaves start browning when they are about half way open. I tried fungicides last year but perhaps I wasn't persistant enough. Does anyone have a cure or is it time to give up and plant something else? Any advise will be very much appreciated. Thanks! Perry

I'm curious, do you throw fertilizer around your palms -- like Osmocote?? Did you possibly throw some into the crown of the poor sago just before it put up a new flush??

If that's the case then you burned the new flush of leaves with the fertilizer... It doesn't look like a mineral deficiency to me but I could be wrong.

[GeneAZ]

Look like manganese deficiency.

Yeah, this is the classic manganese deficiency appearance for cycads. Affected leaves won't recover, but the next growth will be normal if you have corrected the problem. Don't get confused and use magnesium.

Gene

[Perito]

Well it looks pretty unanamous! Nr. Cycad- I usually feed the Palms with Apex palm plus and the other plants including Cycads with Apex 14-14-14, but last year nothing got fed due to me being very busy with other things. Richard- I'm real careful about getting the ferts in the root zone and not in the crown, this has occurred 3 times in a row where beautiful flushes were coming on and then just fizzled out as if burned. I was already planning to do a feeding with Magna-gro (along with my regular regimen). Now it is certain. Some PALMS are also looking yellow and with tip burn. A million thanks Tulio, Mr.Cycad, Redant, Jeff, Richard, Steve and Gene!

[virtualpalm]

It is sometimes difficult to keep magnesium and manganese apart, but the deficiencies and treatments are totally different. Magnesium deficiency causes broad chlorotic banding on the margins of the oldest leaves and leaflets in palms like Phoenix, whereas the deficiency that causes frizzletop (which is the problem with Perry's sago) is manganese deficiency, which is manifested in the new leaves.

Epsom salt is magnesium sulfate, which should not be used to treat frizzletop. It is actually not recommended to apply magnesium sulfate alone to treat magnesium deficiency either, however, because magnesium and potassium compete for the receptors in the roots. So if you apply too much of one of these macronutrients, it can inadvertently cause a deficiency in the other. It is always recommended to apply both magnesium and potassium together to treat either magnesium or potassium deficiency in palms. But that is off the subject.

For some reason over the last few years, I have seen a dramatic increase in manganese deficiency in several of my palms -- particularly after a cold winter. So now I apply a product called TecMangum granules, which is manganese sulfate, at least twice a year to the susceptible palms in my yard. It is absorbed very quickly, and the symptoms disappear quite fast. In sagos, you may not see the results right away because cycads exhibit episodic flushing events as opposed to the continuous flushing of leaves in palms. So you will have to wait until the next flush to see the results. But I would recommend treating the plant immediately with TecMangum or something similar.

Jody

[Perito]

Thank you for the information Jody. I realized after my last posting that Magna Gro isn't what is needed for Manganese deficiency and was hoping for more information. I fertilized most of my garden heavy today with Palm plus which has manganese, and have a bag of Manganese sulphate granules on order. Hoping for good results! Perry

[Perito]

I'm revisiting this thread because sadly, this plant is repeating the same syptoms after going quite a long time between flushes. I applied a third application of Manganese earlier in the year along with my regular fertilizer regimen and the Manganese has had a positive effect on the palms that were yellowing. the plant has it's own emitter so it is not a water proplem. Photos were taken yesterday when I noticed the leaflets begining to brown near the rachis. Soon it will look like the first photo in the thread. Does anyone have any further thoughts on what this might be? I'm thinking it's a virus, but regardless of cause I will remove this plant because of it's prominant location and the fact that it is downright ugly! Thanks in advance for any thoughts on this and thanks to everyone that has already helped with their comments.

[cycadjungle]

It looks like it is just starting again. Here is my short article on this subjecthttp://cycadjungle.8m.com/cycadjungle/deficient%20king%20sagos.html

Usually this shoes up when people have either alkaline should or water, or being in California, you may have both. I used to fertilize people's landscapes every quarter and I would add the combination I mention in the article every spring on to of my regular fertilizer.

[Perito]

Thanks Tom! I'll add some Iron sulfate for now, and in the future both Manganese sulfate and Iron sulfate like you suggest in your article. Time to check pH again since it has been a while. It tested just above neutral before but that was years ago.

[WestCoastGal]

Perry, I'm seeing white spots on the sago fronds. We recently had to treat our sago for scale which is known to affect sagos. It blows quite a distance on the wind so if it is scale, it isn't anything you have done and it will be a constant problem as most treatments do not kill it.

Take a close look at those white spots. Looks reminencent of our fronds. Scale was also noticed on the trunk of our sago, so check yours as well. Sometimes you will see it there if it got down into the roots. The scale will suck the life out of the fronds and if not effectively treated will kill the sago.

If it is scale, here's a bit of info to get you started. Happy to provide more of what we did in that case. There are several stages of sago scale and it will infect the plant and travel down into the ground during the winter only to emerge later and reinfect. If this is what is ailing your sago good news is that for once the solution is easy and cheap. We did some reasearch and treated ours with used coffee grounds and coffee "sun tea" (although I think you might be able to just use black coffee instead of making a tea). The sago gets the grounds treatment twice a year to eradicate it. Initially you want to spray the fronds for a period of time until the systemic effects of the grounds at the base can filter to the fronds. After doing a few spray treatments we noticed that the scale had died. Pretty cool the power of coffee.

BTW any infected fronds that are cut off should be bagged and put in trash not the landscape recycling that would affect mulch made from it. We sprayed our infected cut fronds with coffee spray as an added measure.

Let us know what you find upon closer inspection.

In the meantime here is Tom Broome's article on how he came to discover the effects of coffee: http://www.cycadsg.org/publications/CAS/TCS-Broome-Coffee.pdf

Here's an article from someone who used it and posted photos along the way (figure photos are always remembered): http://wesrouse.hubpages.com/hub/The-Compleat-Gardener-Killing-Cycad-Scale-with-Coffee-Grounds BTW we put coffee grounds in the crown but left the filter in the garbage.

[WestCoastGal]

Here was our sago on June 4 of this year before we knew it had scale. It had recently flushed.

Here was an infected frond that was cut off on July 18.

[cycadjungle]

I wrote a second article on using the coffee that was printed in the cycad newsletter 6 years after the first one. Many people got the wrong idea on parts of my original article. The grounds used as mulch kills scales and other like insects in the ground, but the systemic affects only work on very short cycads like Zamia floridana. I do not think that the grounds would work on a sago with a stem that size.

I get an email from someone every six months from someone telling me about a paper written by the people at Montgomery, where they think the people there proved that the coffee doesn't work, and think I should be upset. I tell them it is no big deal, because their paper talked about treating full sized Cycas debaoensis plants with the mulch, and saying it didn't work. I write back and tell them, I'm not upset, if the Montgomery people had asked me about this I could have saved them the trouble and told them it wouldn't work. Just because it worked on a two foot tall plant, doesn't mean it would work on a full sized plants. Used as a direct connect spray, the tea works on all sizes of plants. It also worked on all kinds of plants and will kill all kinds of scales, mealy bugs, aphids, white flies, and even spider mites. The grounds do work systemically on larger plants, but each person needs to experiment for themselves. As a general rule, I have found that the softer the plant, the better the grounds work systemically. I have gotten into growing super hot peppers, which sell way better than cycads recently and the grounds keep 5 foot tall pepper plants perfectly clean from aphids, no problem. At this point in my life, I could care less about what someone writes in a paper. All I know is that I have 40,000 plants to take care of, and 500 species of plants, and my entire nursery has been kept clean for the last 8 years with what I brew in my barrel. Tom

[Perito]

This information about coffee grounds as an insecticide is great! Thanks WestCoastGal for bringing it up and Tom for your insights. Now if you are making the tea, how much used grounds are appropriate in a gallon of water? I imagine you could use the spray on Palms also but if you make it too strong might you get foliage burn? I'm interested in testing a small batch.

[cycadjungle]

The used coffee grounds from Starbucks is stronger than the ones most people would make at home because they use lots of expresso coffee. The average bag of used coffee grounds from Starbucks is about 6 to 7 pounds, and I used it to make about 50 gallons of spray. I used to tell people that wanted to make a smaller batch, that if they put about 3/4 of a pound in some old panty hose and put that in a 5 gallon bucket, that would work good. Every day for 10 days dip the hose up and down a bunch of times, and then leave it in the bucket, that would work real well. The bottom line is that the mixture needs to be about as dark as dark iced tea. For a smaller batch, if you took a lot of your used grounds and ran it through your coffee maker until it is real dark, that should work, but there again, a little experimenting will give you a good idea on what works and what does not work.

I would say you can't use it too strong. Used coffee grounds has been used in compost for years. It has a 1.25 organic nitrogen rating, it also has calcium and a few other minors. I'm not one of these people with a Dr. degree that obviously knows more than I do, but I would bet that you could double the amount and you would still not see any toxicity on your plants. I do know that the harder the insect is to kill, the stronger you make the spray, the better it works. My mixture calculation works good on scales, so using more might be a waste. I've used it double strength a few times and saw no obvious problems. Tom

[WestCoastGal]

Hi Tom. You da Man! I thought your member name sounded familiar for some reason. We owe you such a big thanks for sharing your findings way back when and were grateful to locate it when we were searching for a treatment for our scale. I'm sure it saved our sago long-term and was a much better way to go than the other treatments mentioned that seemed like they needed repeating, weren't totally effective and were time consuming as well as using strong chemicals.

Tom, thanks for the clarification on the systemic effects. We did the spraying as well so covered all of the bases but that's good to know. Perry, did you end up having scale too?

Since we only had the one sago to treat, we weren't sure how to come up with a mixture of water-to-grounds for the small amount we needed. I ended up using one of those 40 oz. (1.2 liters) Takeya flavor infused ice tea pitchers* to make our coffee tea. Thought the infuser tube was perfect to hold the grounds in and would make clean up a breeze. I pretty much filled the filter with coffee grounds up to the metal screened edge and filled the pitcher about 3/4 with water. Tom, you are correct that Starbucks coffee is strong because we immediately saw a very dark brown coloring in the water pitcher. I still sat the pitcher outside in the sun for most of the day and didn't use the "tea" until about 24 hours later. Poured some into a spray bottle and sprayed the sago fronds well. We did 2-3 spray applications over a few weekends. We also added coffee grounds in the sago crown and in a ring a few inches wide at the trunk after clearing away our bark mulch. The ring was 1/2 to 1 inch deep of grounds. Lightly mulched it in and watered it. We repeated the mixing of soil with existing grounds and watering for 3 to 4 weekends. We did this because the grounds do clump and can retain water (and get moldy) and wanted the area around the trunk to breathe. We saw dead scale within a few weeks and have remained scale free. We've calendared the grounds treatment for twice a year and are very pleased with the results. After we completed the treatment, we added back our bark mulch.

Starbucks doesn't distribute bags of used grounds like they use to. Now they get rid of them (someone told us for health sanitary reasons)...unless you ask for them ahead of time...and even then some stores acted like it was a big deal. We had no idea how much to collect so hit 3-4 stores one weekend and ended up with a heck of a lot of grounds. Since they are wet the grounds will get moldy unless you spread them out to dry, but we had accumulated so much we just put the extra in our landscaping recycling afterwards. But not before spreading a few shovelfuls (small handheld potting shovel) around the base of all of our bamboo (which can also be susceptible to scale I read). Worked it in after a week or so. Everything is doing extremely well.

This is the pitcher I used which worked well for the small amount of coffee tea we needed.

*

[Perito]

I took a couple close up photos just below the new flush yesterday. I can't find any scale on the new leaves, and if there is scale on the trunk they aren't the kind I'm familiar with and don't seem to have life.

Thanks so much Debbie and Tom for the suggestions on making and using the Tea. I have treated the soil and foliage with iron but syptoms are progressing and it looks like as Tom says, I will have to wait for the next flush to see if I'm successful. Still need to check pH.

[WestCoastGal]

Perry, any updates for us?

Here's an updated photo of our sago from February 2015. Don't seem to have a more current one to post unfortunately (and it's dark now or would grab one). It's been doing well and the flush came along just fine afterwards. We'll be doing a preventive series of treatments again soon.