Hi all, Please see attached image of my Waggie. I planted it about 5 years ago and up until this year it doesn't seem to have grown an inch. The mini heatwave that we had in early July appears to have benefitted it immensely. It is about 4' tall at the minute and seems in good health and has shown signs of growth. It was just case of plant and forget. Now, over the past 2 months due to lack of work, I have been working temporarily as an Amazon driver, delivering parcels to all areas of Manchester. In doing so, I have had the opportunity to observe many, many different houses, gardens and their plants, shrubs and trees. I am talking Monkey Puzzle trees 60Ft tall, Palm trees and other interesting items that are giving me ideas for my new landscaping project, which I'll post later. One particular house I called at had a really attractive palm tree about 20Ft tall. I noticed that most, if not all of the lower braches had been cut off. I'd say about 60/70% of the height of the tree. My questions are: 1) Is this necessary on palm trees to stimulate growth? And 2) Do I need to treat the tree with any kind of plant food/fertiliser? Thanks in advance Michael. I
Looks a nice plant, they can be slow in my experience. Its normal for the lower leaves to be removed as they die off, some remove them if they start to look tatty. You could try feeding with a general purpose fertiliser. You can buy specific fertilisers for palms if you want to.
Do you mean Cordylines Michael? Like these below? The lower leaves tend to die off and drop as the trees mature.
My Waggie has been much slower growing compared to my Trachycarpus fortunei. The T fortunei responds to being well watered in my experience, this year they didn't need any extra. I feed once or twice in Spring and Summer. I have the expensive Palm fertilizer, but forget to use it, instead I use MiracleGro.
A good point made by JWK, they seem to like a lot more water than is often suspected. They survive in dryer conditions but grow much faster with good watering.
