Hello!
I take care of all the plants for a four star hotel and the new Kentia Palm trees we got for the swimming pool room are proving to be very challenging.
I've been an avid gardener and had house plants for my whole life with a very green thumb but it doesn't seem to be helping.
The first two we received had some white scaly looking stuff on stalks, but not exactly the same as the scale pictures I found. There was a watery white residue on the leaves as well... But I've not dealt with these plants before so I didn't know if all of this was normal.
I set them up, watered them, and told my boss they needed leaf polish.
I watered them the next week and they generally looked ok but a couple fronds had gotten brown so I trimmed them off thinking they needed to get used to the spot.
I came back the next week to water and found them almost dead!!
Two thirds of the fronds were crunchy brown and the base of the stalks were cracked and browning. There were small black spots on the parts where the scaly stuff was and it was worse too.
I'd never seen anything like it!
The supplier claimed I hadn't watered them enough and did not issue a penny of credit.
These palms came straight from Florida to Colorado and it got very cold a couple of nights. They are right by a door that goes out to the patio and we were suspicious of the night cleaning crew opening doors and freezing them.
We purchased new palms a couple of weeks ago and I have babied them like crazy... But they are looking sick already. I watered them after we had them a week and the top layer of soil had dried out. I checked them every day and misted them and they were looking good. So I didn't check on them for a few days...
I went in on the seventh day to water and they were losing fronds! Brown and shriveled just like the last ones did... With more yellowing and heading to brown.
They were dried out more than I expected for only a week of no water so I gave them an extra good drink until some came out the bottom and misting. Two days later five more fronds on each looked bad.
I have no idea what to do.
Here are the things I think may be problems:
One is right by the exterior door. It looked worse.
The other is a bit further from the door, but sustains constant wind blowing from ventilation system of exercise room.
The air is extremely chlorinated from pool and especially hot tub near by.
The wall of windows they are by is south west facing and very direct sun for the second part of the day.
My main concern is that my boss says she had palms of some sort in this very spot for 10 years without trouble so she is blaming me for the issue... Even though the palms that were there when I took the position 6 months ago were sick from the start and nothing I did helped.
The other concern is that now the hotel is questioning my abilities because these cost $225 wholesale each and I'm sure they paid plenty for them.
Please please any advice would be so appreciated!!!
Thanks for reading my very long post!!!
