How to grow and specific care that’s needed for a yucca.
List of Yucca facts
Name – Yucca elephantipes
Type – Shrub, indoor plant
Height – 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.5 m) indoors
Exposure – Very well-lit
Soil – soil mix
Foliage – evergreen
These are the answers to the many questions that can arise when one has the luck of owning a magnificent yucca.
A must-have among the indoor plants, here are our tips to care for it perfectly.
Planting and repotting yucca
Planting yucca in pots
Yucca requires good soil mix, which you can amend with ⅓ compost if you have some.
In order to enhance drainage, pour clay pebbles or small stones into the pot to form a layer at the bottom.
This will help ensure that roots won’t wallow in water, which could be fatal to it.
- Set up your yucca in a fair-sized pot filled with special indoor plant or green plant soil mix.
- Although it may be necessary to repot it in spring every 2 or 3 years, when not repotting then go for regular topdressing which should also perfectly answer the growth medium needs of the plant.
Outdoor yucca
Generally speaking, yucca doesn’t tolerate the cold and can only be planted outdoors in regions where the climate in winter is mild.
Just as might be done in pots, feel free to place a bed of gravel, small stones or clay pebbles to ensure proper drainage.
Atop this layer, you’ll be using a blend of soil mix, garden soil and sand.
The ideal emplacement for a yucca
Under our climates, yucca adapts well to living indoors in our apartments and homes.
It grows best when surrounding temperatures hold around 65 to 72°F (18 to 22°C) and requires very good light, even some direct sunlight.
- Behind a window, though, best to avoid too much direct exposure to the sun which might dry your yucca up.
Best to place it near a window facing to the West so that it would still have a good deal of light.
- If you live in a house that is quite dark, avoid purchasing yucca because it won’t cope well with the lack of luminosity.
Advice on watering yucca
Year-round, it is important to mist water on the leaves regularly to recreate its natural environment living conditions which are rather moist.
For strong growth and magnificent leafage, you can add leaf plant fertilizer.
Watering yucca in spring and summer:
This is usually the time of the year when yucca grows most.
Watering must be regular but limited, in order to not suffocate the plant’s roots.
- Water regularly while letting the soil mix dry in the surface before watering again.
- You might say that moderate watering every 2 or 3 days is often needed.
More or less every two weeks, you can offer it some liquid fertilizer, taking great care to moisten the soil mix beforehand.
Watering yucca in fall and winter
Start reducing the watering because the plant water needs begin to decrease.
- Only when the soil is dry down to the first inch or so (a couple centimeters), water to moisten the entire soil mix clump again.
- Again, one might contend that watering one or 2 times a month should suffice.
But this also depends on where your yucca is placed: if it is in full sun, its needs will surely be higher.
- Finally, this season is also the one to stop adding fertilizer, from October all the way to March and April.
Learn more about yucca
Yucca is a very beautiful plant native to Central America that adapts very well to indoor life in an apartment or house.
All in one aesthetic, resilient and very easy to grow, this is one of the most appreciated and often-purchased indoor plants.
Its foliage is particularly elegant and brings a touch of exotic life to a living room, dining area, or any other room of the house that is well-lit.
Diseases and parasites that attack yucca
Yucca leaves are gnarled
This is undoubtedly due to lack of light or excess water.
- Find a more exposed location for it and reduce watering to match our recommendations above.
Yucca leaves turn yellow
If the plant continues to produce new leaves, this is part of your yucca’s natural cycle.
Trees, even evergreen trees, lose their leaves to renew them.
- So you can simply let them dry up on the yucca, and cut them off when they’ve shriveled away entirely.
- If no new shoots appear, however, and that your yucca looks pitiful, check on your watering and water drainage, and eventually support the plant with liquid fertilizer every fortnight.
Read also:
Potted up, white background by Gerald Bock under Pixabay license
In the kitchen by Flower Council Holland / the joy of plants
We live in Northern France and we get very hot summers (usually) and very cold Winters, so come late autumn I bring in the Yukka plants and put them in a bright unheated spare bedroom. I do not water them at all until spring when they go outside again. I have successfully chopped off the tops if they get too long and straggly and repot them to grow on. The parent plant always grows big and bushy, sometimes from the base but also on the cut stem.