How often to water parlour palm

The interval

A parlour palm is watered about every 7 days in the growing season and about every 14 days in winter. Growing season means the warm, bright months from spring to early autumn, roughly March to September in the northern hemisphere and September to March in the southern. Winter is the cold, short-day part of your own year. The Missouri Botanical Garden asks for soil kept uniformly moist while the palm grows, with less water in winter, and the interval doubles because a slow plant in weak light uses very little.

Uniformly moist is not wet. Push a finger 2 to 3 cm into the compost and water when that depth is dry, with the lower part of the pot still cool and damp. Then lift the pot. A palm in a small pot is noticeably light once the compost has dried.

Water from the top until water runs from the drainage holes, wait ten minutes and empty the saucer. Use rainwater if you can. The RHS advises it, because hard tap water can make the compost too alkaline, and it lists hard water among the causes of brown leaf tips, along with dry air, underwatering and direct sun. Humidity is medium for this plant, so ordinary room air does, though a light misting about every 4 days helps in a heated room.

The signs of a wet palm are slow and can look like age. Lower fronds yellow, and a palm in waterlogged compost eventually goes limp because the roots have rotted and cannot supply the fronds, however much water is in the pot. A dry palm browns at the tips and along the edges. The brown can be trimmed off following the leaflet's own shape, but nothing should be cut from the growing tip of a stem.

The particular risk with this palm is a pot that is never refreshed. Its roots resent disturbance, so it is repotted rarely, and old compost holds water and feed salts that quietly build up. Water thoroughly enough that some runs out each time, which carries salts away, and give the pot a good flush at the sink once or twice in the growing season.

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