Yuccas can do quite well in low light conditions if kept dry as you say you do. They are rarely subject to bugs as the leaves are so tough, although scale can be a problem, and as Dove says, poorly plants are more susceptible. Yiu don't need a specialist compost, but free draining is best. If you already have some allpurpose compost (a john innes is best as Yuccas can become top heavy), add some perlite to it before repotting. (b&q, ebay, amazon, etc). 1 part to 5-6 parts compost should be enough, less for JI, more for multipurpose. Although I am now an organic gardener, we used provado bug killer to great effect at work, even for 25' ficus trees. it can be watered into the compost as well. not the aerosol, the concentrate. (again, ebay/amazon) Do not use when compost is dry, it needs to be dampish, but not too wet, either.
Have just looked at your pics. although not clear, the bugs look like an aphid of some description. Squish any you see! And although yuccas do naturally lose basal leaves regularly (it is how they gain their trunk), yours has a distinctly over-watered look. Both over- and under-watering can look similar, until you see them side by side. As it is quite a new plant, i woild suggest that it was already suffering from over-watering and poor conditions before you bought it., and it looks as though the small branch has died.
HOWEVER, if you can be bothered, all is not lost!
Remove it from it's pot IMMEDIATELY! Tease out old compost and dead rotten roots (if it smells rotten when you do this, don't despair, there may still be a chance if you can see some live, white roots, or if a broken older root is sill white inside.) Then rinse as much of the old compost as you can away from the rootball with a shower spray or tap, using tepid water so as not to cause more shock. While you wait for your small bag of perlite (or vermiculite if no perlite) to arrive, let the roots dry out almost completely.
A few days later, the perlite has arrived! Now put some perlite into a small bag, soak the roots, let them drain for a minute, then put them into the bag, hold tightly around the stem, and shake as if seasoning a chcken breast! the perlite will stick to the wet roots. Take the plant carefully from the bag and set aside. Mix the perlite remaining in the bag with compost (as above but absolute accuracy not neccessary, but too much perlite and the yucca will just fall over) and re-pot your yucca in the same pot. (you cleaned it while waiting for the perlite!)
Now, and this is important. DO NOT WATER your newly potted yucca until the leaves start to look a little dull. A week or two. It had clean fresh water twice. Now it has a compost mix that is (or should be, if fresh) a little damp. The point of all of this is to let the roots recover from being wet. When they dried, this killed some of the organisms that caused the rot. Clean water has washed some away, hopefullly, along with any bug eggs or larvae in the compost.
When you do water your yucca again, do it gently and sparingly with tepid water. Do not soak the compost yet, not until it is showing signs of strong growth from the top, or makes a new bud from the trunk. Keep it in a warm bright place, out of direct sunlight until it has recovered. Then as much light as possible. Never pull dead leaves, always cut them close to the trunk. The last bit will fall off when it is ready.
Hope I've answered your questions! Incidentally, most of what I have told you came from a fuchsia grower, but I have found it to help many poorly, over-wet plants, including yuccas.
As it is such a small plant, if you want to do the above, I will happily send you some perlite or vermiculite, and a small amount of ready-mixed compost that I use, if you promise to keep me posted with results. Although many gardeners would just thro
GardenJeannie (and everyone) there is some good news and some bad news, overly ites better than i thought it would be though.
Since my last reply i hadent done anything about it (xmas time + work experiance) and i watched on sadly as it lost more leaves.
totaly its lost maby 5 leaves from the bottem and working upwards, and two are yellowings but not gone brown.
so i decided todays to get on and see if maby it was saveable, i hate to just throw away plants unless they really are at deaths door, and as this is currently my ownly house plant I realy did not want to lose it. (plenty in the gardern but parents look after that, i dont own any of the plants ect its there garden)
However i have got to a point were I am not sure what to do next. (I will upload a photo of it in its current state in a bit.)
I have taken it out of its pot, and with some soap and water thougrly washed the leaves and can see no sign of the pests, whatever they were, and have also removed all of the compost from the roots (well as much as possable without removeing the remaining roots.)
i have made sure there is no soap residue to cuase any harm, i have cut off any dead leaves and left the two yellow ones (there only yellow in the middle.) in the hope that they might recover.
i have ended up removeing the soild and washing the roots with water and makeing sure there was no soap on them afterwards watsoever, i feared the worst, rotten roots and all dead.
However this has no been the cases, there was lots of white roots, however i have lost about 1/3 or more of them whilst removeing the soil, oops =(
no sign of rot and the soil was not even more than slightly damp, NO rot or smells, no sign of bugs, the only issue was there were some rather thick woody roots, but these surrport the small white roots so have left them on, but have untangled some of them as it seems my plant was pot bound and the roots were in a circle at the bottem, i have trimmed them back a bit to exspose some withe roots as well.
so far i have healhy rooots yay!
so dont think this has been over watwering although it may have been as when i watered it i did soak it and then let it dry then soak it again, maby i should only make it damp and not soak it?
after unpotting and remvoing soil and cleaning leaves i can see no signs of rot, the trunk it NOT spongy, still nice hand hard, even at the bottem were the roots are.
there were no signs of bugs in the soild and i cant see any on the leaves anymore (I hope there are not anywayss.)
I am not sure what to do next though, it currently sits in a bucket in my room wunplanted so it can dry out.
I dont have any compost other than a cactus mix should i just plant it now today? or what?
I wont be able to get any perlight or anything like that, no money at this time of year.
how long should i leave it to dry out be fore repotting? How do i stop it getting bugs again, how do i water it, as it wont have optimal conditions, theres not a topn of airflow in my room and not much sun eather, its normaly warm though around 14-18 degrres depending on time of day and if heating is on or not.
sorry for this short novel of a post, any help is much aprecatied as is all the already given help thx.
Posts
i used to get those small flies on the soil of my plants,,
then i covered the soil with small gravel ( from the petshop for fish tanks.)
and water at the bottom of the pot.
that cured it .... good luck
Yuccas can do quite well in low light conditions if kept dry as you say you do. They are rarely subject to bugs as the leaves are so tough, although scale can be a problem, and as Dove says, poorly plants are more susceptible. Yiu don't need a specialist compost, but free draining is best. If you already have some allpurpose compost (a john innes is best as Yuccas can become top heavy), add some perlite to it before repotting. (b&q, ebay, amazon, etc). 1 part to 5-6 parts compost should be enough, less for JI, more for multipurpose. Although I am now an organic gardener, we used provado bug killer to great effect at work, even for 25' ficus trees. it can be watered into the compost as well. not the aerosol, the concentrate. (again, ebay/amazon) Do not use when compost is dry, it needs to be dampish, but not too wet, either.
Have just looked at your pics. although not clear, the bugs look like an aphid of some description. Squish any you see! And although yuccas do naturally lose basal leaves regularly (it is how they gain their trunk), yours has a distinctly over-watered look. Both over- and under-watering can look similar, until you see them side by side. As it is quite a new plant, i woild suggest that it was already suffering from over-watering and poor conditions before you bought it., and it looks as though the small branch has died.
HOWEVER, if you can be bothered, all is not lost!
Remove it from it's pot IMMEDIATELY! Tease out old compost and dead rotten roots (if it smells rotten when you do this, don't despair, there may still be a chance if you can see some live, white roots, or if a broken older root is sill white inside.) Then rinse as much of the old compost as you can away from the rootball with a shower spray or tap, using tepid water so as not to cause more shock. While you wait for your small bag of perlite (or vermiculite if no perlite) to arrive, let the roots dry out almost completely.
A few days later, the perlite has arrived! Now put some perlite into a small bag, soak the roots, let them drain for a minute, then put them into the bag, hold tightly around the stem, and shake as if seasoning a chcken breast! the perlite will stick to the wet roots. Take the plant carefully from the bag and set aside. Mix the perlite remaining in the bag with compost (as above but absolute accuracy not neccessary, but too much perlite and the yucca will just fall over) and re-pot your yucca in the same pot. (you cleaned it while waiting for the perlite!)
Now, and this is important. DO NOT WATER your newly potted yucca until the leaves start to look a little dull. A week or two. It had clean fresh water twice. Now it has a compost mix that is (or should be, if fresh) a little damp. The point of all of this is to let the roots recover from being wet. When they dried, this killed some of the organisms that caused the rot. Clean water has washed some away, hopefullly, along with any bug eggs or larvae in the compost.
When you do water your yucca again, do it gently and sparingly with tepid water. Do not soak the compost yet, not until it is showing signs of strong growth from the top, or makes a new bud from the trunk. Keep it in a warm bright place, out of direct sunlight until it has recovered. Then as much light as possible. Never pull dead leaves, always cut them close to the trunk. The last bit will fall off when it is ready.
Hope I've answered your questions! Incidentally, most of what I have told you came from a fuchsia grower, but I have found it to help many poorly, over-wet plants, including yuccas.
As it is such a small plant, if you want to do the above, I will happily send you some perlite or vermiculite, and a small amount of ready-mixed compost that I use, if you promise to keep me posted with results. Although many gardeners would just thro
GardenJeannie (and everyone) there is some good news and some bad news, overly ites better than i thought it would be though.
Since my last reply i hadent done anything about it (xmas time + work experiance) and i watched on sadly as it lost more leaves.
totaly its lost maby 5 leaves from the bottem and working upwards, and two are yellowings but not gone brown.
so i decided todays to get on and see if maby it was saveable, i hate to just throw away plants unless they really are at deaths door, and as this is currently my ownly house plant I realy did not want to lose it. (plenty in the gardern but parents look after that, i dont own any of the plants ect its there garden)
However i have got to a point were I am not sure what to do next. (I will upload a photo of it in its current state in a bit.)
I have taken it out of its pot, and with some soap and water thougrly washed the leaves and can see no sign of the pests, whatever they were, and have also removed all of the compost from the roots (well as much as possable without removeing the remaining roots.)
i have made sure there is no soap residue to cuase any harm, i have cut off any dead leaves and left the two yellow ones (there only yellow in the middle.) in the hope that they might recover.
i have ended up removeing the soild and washing the roots with water and makeing sure there was no soap on them afterwards watsoever, i feared the worst, rotten roots and all dead.
However this has no been the cases, there was lots of white roots, however i have lost about 1/3 or more of them whilst removeing the soil, oops =(
no sign of rot and the soil was not even more than slightly damp, NO rot or smells, no sign of bugs, the only issue was there were some rather thick woody roots, but these surrport the small white roots so have left them on, but have untangled some of them as it seems my plant was pot bound and the roots were in a circle at the bottem, i have trimmed them back a bit to exspose some withe roots as well.
so far i have healhy rooots yay!
so dont think this has been over watwering although it may have been as when i watered it i did soak it and then let it dry then soak it again, maby i should only make it damp and not soak it?
after unpotting and remvoing soil and cleaning leaves i can see no signs of rot, the trunk it NOT spongy, still nice hand hard, even at the bottem were the roots are.
there were no signs of bugs in the soild and i cant see any on the leaves anymore (I hope there are not anywayss.)
I am not sure what to do next though, it currently sits in a bucket in my room wunplanted so it can dry out.
I dont have any compost other than a cactus mix should i just plant it now today? or what?
I wont be able to get any perlight or anything like that, no money at this time of year.
how long should i leave it to dry out be fore repotting? How do i stop it getting bugs again, how do i water it, as it wont have optimal conditions, theres not a topn of airflow in my room and not much sun eather, its normaly warm though around 14-18 degrres depending on time of day and if heating is on or not.
sorry for this short novel of a post, any help is much aprecatied as is all the already given help thx.
Here is how it is now, looking sorry for itself =(
http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab9/AnthonyMcEwen2014/IMAG0102_zpsd476bf6c.jpg
It has this cap of wax on it? What is it about / for, should I take it off?
http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab9/AnthonyMcEwen2014/IMAG0105_zpsb27d96c8.jpg
Here are the roots as of now.
http://i844.photobucket.com/albums/ab9/AnthonyMcEwen2014/IMAG0104_zps9981b41a.jpg
p.s I dont know what you mean by "it looks like the small branch is dead?"
as it only has the one branch with leaves unless you meant the small buds which some of them are dead.