Dave Brown wrote:Hi jsp, and welcome
Decided to give up lurking then
Not sure what you need to know about the Washingtonia, but Cordyline australis are easy for me....... don't pick the seed up off the ground and they germinate
They come up in my gravel. The tiny seed fall through to a layer of sand where it stays moist. Temps 18 to 25C
Well, I'm not an experienced novice at all - my last go at gardening was with marigolds when I was 6! 20 years on and I thought I'd give some palms a shot...
I had 50 Washingtonia F. seeds that I potted. Around 15 came up, which I was happy with. They're about a year old now and have been grown in my conservatory. Some are growing tall and getting quite green, but some of the others are browning and don't seem to be doing much growing - this seems to have been more of a problem since I moved them to a mesh-covered set of garden shelves a few weeks ago. Since then, I've brought them back inside.
I water them at least once a week, but I'm wondering how I can estimate the 'right' amount to water them?
I've used a normal bag of garden compost (or whatever was hanging around in the shed) which was quite moist and soft. The garden soil we have here has quite a bit of clay in it, and so seems to clump easily and set hard - I don't use it.
With the cordylines, I've not had a single success - I planted a single seed in each cell of a set of trays, putting some of the compost in to begin with, then used a biro to insert the seeds about 1cm from the surface. On the advice of the seed seller, I soaked the seeds in lukewarm water for a day - I also tried it for a couple of hours, on the advice of someone else. The cells were watered whenever the soil appeared to be dry, in order to moisten it.
I'm obviously doing something wrong with the cordyline... I just don't know what!
