Here is what *I* would do: 1. take both plants out of the pot. 2. Repot the smaller p. lameri back in the pot w/fresh mix. 3. Lay the broken one out and splint the break, leaving the break open for surgery. 4. Sterilize some very sharp tools. 5. Inspect all the roots. Cut off anything mushy or rotted. 6. Cut away any rot from the break. 7. Sprinkle all the cuts with cinnamon or powder fungicide. 8. Place it in bright shade completely out of the rain until it begins to callus over. 9. Mix some extremely sharp soil for it - 50/50 potting soil and haydite (The Natural Gardener, S.Austin $5/40lbs) should do the trick nicely. Repot your large plant into a larger container. Though I am a believer in underpotting most succies, this is a tree. An eight ft tree should have a bulkier trunk than I see on this one. Stake it up with some rebar for stability. Dont worry about immediate leaf drop; it may experience a bit of shock at first. Keep it in bright shade, no direct sun, *no rain* until you see some new growth. Since we know it is water-logged at present, it can probably do without water for a couple of weeks anyway BUT *I* would give it one dose of heavy-solution *liquefied seaweed*, which is great for stressed plants. In a month or two, whenever you feel it is on the mend, begin re-acclimating it to the sun. It would be a shame to lose such a nice large tree. Has it bloomed yet? At least you've got another well on its way. Let's see what others say. HTH - Jo

FWIW A) worm castings provide very little in terms of nutrition, and used in any volume (in containers) they add to excess water retention. B) The problem could very well be a nutritional issue, especially if most of the leaf damage is affecting older leaves. Reason: Some nutrients are mobile in the plant (N,P,K,Mg), the rest are considered immobile or nearly so. The mobile nutrients can be moved from one location in the plant to another in order to fuel growth of new organs (leaves/ stems/ roots), while the immobile nutrients are locked into existing tissues. It is almost always the case that container media cannot break down fast enough to provide for all of a plant's nutritional needs, which creates deficiencies, even in new/ fresh plantings. When these deficiencies arise, the plant robs mobile nutrients from existing organs, mostly older leaves, which results in the plant recognizing the now compromised 'donor' leaves as a liability, which causes the plant (a shedding organism) to rid itself of the liability by shedding the leaves. C) PTs are very tolerant of droughty conditions. That is not to say they like/ prefer to be allowed to dry down completely, but drying down completely would be the lesser of two evils when the 'other' evil would be watering at intervals too short.. Ideally, you would be flushing the soil thoroughly when you water, and waiting until the soil is nearly but not completely dry to water again. IF you have been watering in sips because you think the soil is too water-retentive and are trying to avoid risking the specter of root rot, your grow medium is likely inappropriately water-retentive, not to mention the fact that watering in sips ensures dissolved solids (salts) in your tapwater and/or fertilizer solution remains/ builds up in the soil to the point where water uptake becomes difficult for the plant. A high level of salts in the soil can actually reverse the process of osmosis and pull water OUT of cells by exactly the same mechanism that curing salts pulls water from meats like ham/ bacon/ sausage. Moisture levels near the top of the soil column are relatively inconsequential. What is important is the level of moister at the bottom of the pot. I'll leave you with something I wrote about using a "tell". The "tell" will provide you with the information you need to determine appropriate watering intervals. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

I'll 2nd petrushka's advice. Ponytail palms are slow growing plants, so it's going to take some time to recover. The best place for it right now is somewhere outdoors in a brightly lit, shaded location. I just spent some time repotting one of my smaller ponytails. Luckily, I took a a few photos along the way. Hopefully, it gives a good example of what a healthy plant with healthy roots looks like... Usually, I'd pull off any dead foliage from my ponytails as they send out new growth, but with this one, I decided to leave it as it is, to give it a more natural appearance. To make it easier to handle during the repotting, I laid the plant on its side and "combed" the leaves up and tied the leaves temporarily together to keep them up and out of the way. Once I was finished, I just cut the ties and combed the leaves back out. Ponytail palms actively grow during the spring and summer months. During this time, they need both water and sunlight in order to grow properly. I don't even really care for my ponytails anymore. I move them outdoors in the early half of spring and ignore them for the most part until it's time to move them back indoors. When autumn arrives, any new growth is fully formed and has had sufficient time to completely harden off. Ponytail palms are no longer growing during this time, so both water and sunlight aren't as necessary. My ponytails get moved back indoors before the weather gets too cold for them outside, and they spend the winter indoors where they'll probably get watered once a month. Any more than that and they'll try sending out new growth before spring has arrived. That new foliage won't grow like it should, and you'll encounter a whole new set of problems.

Watering 3 times per month is pretty much the same as saying every 10 days, and with a large number of commercial media out there that can easily go 3 weeks w/o watering, I wouldn't think the potentiality of over-watering is able to be eliminated as a candidate for the cause of necrotic leaf tips. That said, there are several reasons old leaves might be showing these symptoms, over-watering being one. Others include a high level of dissolved solids (salts from fertilizer solutions and tapwater) in the soil solution, low fertility - particularly a deficiency of nitrogen, root congestion, and under-watering. Fluoride never leaves the plant until the organ containing fluoride is shed, so the greatest build-up in plants is in older foliage where symptoms are most likely to be made manifest. By what metric do you decide when it's time to water? What are you fertilizing with? how often? how much? what are the NPK %. If you see wilting in leaves while you can readily detect moisture in the medium, the wilting is VERY likely due to over-watering. When you water, do you water in small sips to avoid over-watering, or do you apply enough water to fully saturate the medium and allow for at least 20% of the o/a volume applied to exit the drain hole? Do you allow the plant to sit in the effluent that exits the drain hole as/ after you water? Al