If the yucca is doing well, a small hardware store plant can become a ceiling-high monster - which threatens to become crooked and crooked due to its size. In addition, many yuccas do not branch, but simply form a trunk with a single crest. Many indoor gardeners have therefore come up with the idea of cutting the trunk and artificially stimulating the plant to branch. The measure is controversial because it is not always successful.
Can you make a yucca palm branch by cutting the trunk?
Scarving the yucca palm trunk can stimulate new shoots. Make a 2-3mm deep and 1-2cm long cut just below the crown. However, it is more successful to deadhead the plant to promote its branching by planting crested cuttings in soil and sand.
Branch the yucca – no scoring necessary
In fact, you can have success by scoring the trunk: To encourage the yucca to grow new shoots, simply make a cut about two to three millimeters deep and one to two centimeters long in the trunk, preferably in one place just below the crown. However, you might be more successful with this method:
- You can divide large yuccas: all individual parts (including leafless trunk pieces) can be rooted.
- To stimulate new shoots, deadhead the yucca
- and plant the head in a container with potting soil and sand.
- Leave the trunk in the old flower pot.
- Now it's time to wait: the crested cutting will probably root quickly,
- but stem cuttings often need a few months for new growth.
- But then they often get two new shoots at the same time - directly under the cut.
- By the way, you should seal large interfaces on the trunk with tree wax (€11.00 on Amazon).
By the way: The planting looks even more lush if you put the rooted former head in the same pot as the mother plant and thus grow two trunks. Of course, you should use a larger planter for this.
Shortening the yucca and repotting it – this is how it works
To cut up the yucca, it is best to use a long, sharp knife (with teeth, for example a bread knife) and/or a saw. To ensure that rooting and re-sprouting really works, you can heed these tips:
- Do not place yucca cuttings in water for rooting.
- This often only promotes the development of rot, but not of roots.
- Do not let the interfaces dry, but plant the pieces straight away.
- When taking stem cuttings, remember where is up and where is down.
- Because they want to be replanted exactly the same way.
- For middle parts, the upper cut surface should be sealed with tree wax (€11.00 at Amazon).
- This prevents fungi and other pathogens from penetrating.
Tip
The quickest and easiest way for a cut yucca to sprout again is in spring - when it is already sprouting in nature.
