All I know is if you cut them you shall be cursed with thousand new ones. Should you try to dig them you shall be cursed again with a thousand new ones. Good Luck with your yucka.(yucca).

you will NEVER kill a yucca by cutting .. in fact.. you wont kill it by digging.. unless you go half way to china ... and even then.. it will probably come back .. lol ... a good chemical killer is about all that will get rid of it ...

are you sure you didnt read to cut back the flower stalk when it finished bloom ... otherwise its hard to comment on what you may or may not have read ...

ken

Thanks Ken! Yeah it was right out of my perennial bible or something...I have so many books, I want to find the passage so I can post it. Maybe I misunderstood. At any rate, now that I am seeing how terrible they look when the needles start to droop, I will probably try to dig them out this fall....with a stump grinder...they are ALL OVER SE Mich.

No. That is not true. Yucca's flower again year after year. Its typical to have one bloom and another not bloom, it doesn't mean anything negative. Perhaps you are confusing yucca with agave? Agave's (aka Century Plant) die after blooming and should be removed in a landscape situation allowing the pups to take over.

Just cut off the spent flowering stalk. Unless its just something you hate or is in the wrong spot, it sounds like a nice specimen, they make a useful sculptural addition to a landscape. Adam's Needle is a very nice type often used in landscaping.

For the sake of proving I didn't dream this up: from "The Perennial Care Manual" by Nancy J Ondra, page 353: "Once the flowers are done, you could simply cut off the stalk at the base, but its best to cut out that entire rosette, because it won't bloom again. The smaller rosettes around it may take several more years to reach flowering size, so your clumps may not bloom every year."

I'm sorry I should have made it clear that I really believe yuccas are beautiful plants. The problem arrises when one tries to remove them.

KJM, It sounds like Nancy J. Ondra has never grown them personally and included yucca in a generic book she wrote on perennials using mistaken information. If you had a book devoted to succulents, cactus, agave, yucca and other similar plants I doubt you would read such a thing. "Cut at the base of the stalk" is obviously referring to the flower stalk. On the other hand, it takes quite some time for them to reach mature height and I cannot imagine anything as dumb as whacking it down after waiting so long for it to get mature. It'd be like cutting a tree down.

Just a note-- most people grow spiky plants such as agaves, dasylirion and yucca's for the strong architectural statement they make rather than the blooms, those are just a sort of an added bonus;)) If mine don't bloom I'm not too disappointed, the blooms are quite brief although they can be show stoppers for a couple weeks or so.

i hope you read that link i gave .. lol ...

yucca are exotic in the north.. as we all.. at one time or another.. like the desert look of plants where the snow flies ... we can pretend we live in TX or AZ ... etc ...

also.. they are cheap.. and near bullet proof and care free ... so exotic ...

that is why they are seen everywhere .. though they arent noticed until the send up that spike of flowers ...

many of my first books were by world champion British gardeners ... guess what.. MI is not great britian ... unless a book is written by your neighbor ... you have to take what you read.. with some about of skepticism ...

as such.. as noted above.. i highly wonder what this author is talking about ... in regard to this plant ...

as it might take you a number of years to kill these things.. i dont know why you insist on waiting until spring .. they are probably storing energy now.. to start growing in spring.. so why let them ...

but.. you do what you need to do.. when you have time for it... or when you want to ... because.. after all.. its your garden ...

ken

Ken, I will just dig them up in the fall. I would rather put a smoke bush where they are or something similar. The needles on them bend and turn brown at the bottom--I can never get mine to stick out straight and make that nice sphere-shaped plant.

I have quite a few Adams Needle and for years I had a love hate relationship with them because I didnt know how to care for them and keep them looking nice. So, after the flower spins but before it turns to seed remove it from the base or else more will come.I keep it shaped and pruned with regular household scissors cutting all the ugly brown and bent leaves. You cant destroy it so cut away. This is also how I keep it from taking over other perennials in my garden.