Oops! I forgot to mention that otherwise it seems in good health. The purple arrow points to the latest dying leaf that I show in the first picture, but the blue arrow is pointing to new growth. It stayed a tiny sprout for a while, but after I watered it these last two times (two weeks apart from each other) it has shot right up!

Hi & welcome! I think you picked a great first plant. Not sure what barely watered for 2 seasons amounts to but it could have been too little water for the plant to sustain all of its' foliage and the older leaves are being discarded. As long as the soil has plenty of air in it, Sans grow quickly when kept as moist as any other leafy tropical. They are not cacti, though they can survive times of drought if/when they happen.

These are plants that like being pot bound, your pot looks too big and it may be potted too deeply.

Sorry to disagree, but I think the pot size is fine, not too big at all. During Spring & Summer these plants want & need thorough watering ('til it comes out the bottom of the pot). Other times of the year they need water at least one a month.

Pot size is fine if you have an excellent well draining medium. Most people using commercial potting soil do not. These plants like getting water but they need to dry out between watering. If your soil is holding on to water for a while after a good water, that is not good for them and will lead even an easy care plant like this to decline. I think the soil is probably too moisture retentive in this case, so in this instance without getting into the discussion of gritty mix/container mediums a smaller pot may be better because it will hold less water between waterings and allow the plant to dry out between. But l'm just a person on the internet.

Thanks everyone for your input! When I moved it into the terra cotta, I did use regular potting soil. Rookie mistake.

This sans isn't my first plant, I've been keeping a variety plants for about two years now. But I haven't gone through enough growing seasons to actually know what I'm doing. Unfortunately all of my plants are in regular potting soil, and the more I learn, the more I realize this is probably unwise.

I have all but my hanging plants in terra cotta, and I have felt like I have seen good results with that (as opposed to trapping moisture with plastic or glazed pots), but now some of my older plants are starting to not look as great.

I was hoping that joining a forum would help me take my houseplanting to the "next level", because Google searches were only giving me the same generic information. I can see that it certainly will, because after only one post you all have already given me valuable information.

With all of that said, what would you suggest is the next step for my poor sansevieria? Repotting it into a better draining soil, I assume. But when? Could I wait until the spring? Should I consider separating it into smaller pots?

Thanks for all of your knowledge and advice! It's so appreciated. :)

Happy to suggest food for thought. ;)

It probably just needs some water at this point but if you want to repot, it should be fine. I've never done anything to a Sans to cause it to die, and I've done a LOT of different things to so many of them over the years.

Separating is easy. If the pots are too small, they're going to topple over so easily, and not be able to stay in them for long because the rhizomes/new pups won't have room to grow. If there's a choice, choose wider vs. deeper. The roots/rhizomes grow much more mass in a horizontal direction than vertically.

I would like to redirect back to the picture; Their is a foliar disease, look above the purple arrow for that discolored area and the light colored circle. Also their is a sickly color to the base of several leaf clusters- I would not water it till that has been investigated. Best not get the leaves wet either.

I suspect a drainage problem.

Any chance you put pebbles inside the pot at the very bottom under the soil (folks often do this, thinking it helps drainage, which it actually can impede)?

There is a very high probability that over-watering/water-retentive medium is at the heart of the issue.

No plant likes or prefers to be grown under root-bound conditions. That advice, when offered, always needs to be qualified if it's to be meaningful. Even then it forces the grower to choose one of two evils. Rather than force the plant to suffer root restriction in order to minimize the ill effects of an overly water-retentive soil, it's much better to utilize a container large enough to give roots room to run and a soil that drains well enough that over-watering isn't a concern. That very simply removes the grower from the horns of the dilemma.

The cause of the yellow/dying leaf issue isn't a foliar disease, though there might be a damping-off type fungal issue in play. The leaf blemish is a result of a cultural issue, possibly oedema. Any fungal 'settlers' that might have become homesteaders in the area of the blemish are opportunists that arrived after the fact.

Al

I see some good advise given but this is the most hardy of the Sans. trifasciata. I think the plant is fine but leaf loss happens most when the plant is disturbed and it looks planted too deep. This will cause leaf lost due to damping off. To correct this and easily done is to add a little sulfur to the next water cycle. Sulfur sold as outdoor acid loving plant supplement. Also when replanted use much more perlite in the mix. After the plant readjusted you will notice new rhizome growth producing new plants.

Stush

Regarding the blemish above the arrow that Sans2014 calls a foliar disease, he is right. It is not edema, it's not caused by a cultural issue, and in particular has nothing to do with the soil mix.

It's a disease first experienced in 2010 by a few nurseries in Florida. After identifying and attempting to eradicate this disease from many thousands of sansevierias in the nurseries, all were destroyed. While treatments helped, they couldn't eradicate the disease completely and bring the plants to a standard required for sale.

This disease is now widespread across the country in sansevierias, and those of us who collect and grow large numbers of them are acutely aware that it's a common problem. It occurs on healthy, well-grown plants and therefore isn't necessarily brought on by stressors such as being root-bound, over-watered, or grown in supposedly 'incorrect' soil mixes.

http://journals.fcla.edu/fshs/article/view/84019

https://www.harrells.com/blog/2012-disease-forecast

https://get.google.com/albumarchive/110412019611873315249/album/AF1QipNdu2DRu2cB_TpSwXWK5J6Ump73jkb7ahqU9du0

http://www.ballpublishing.com/tropicaltopics/Newsletter.aspx?article=2027

Russ

Thanks Russ, now I can't sleep. Going to spray all my Sans with Captan to be on the safe side. I did have a moonshine that showed this and it just rotted and couldn't be saved. I don't think it spread to my others but now I'm really scared. From what I just read, We may just have the only sans left for the hobby. Any new sans I get goes into isolation. Since this is a fungus, Does it go all the way thru the plant or just a leaf or two? From what I read, whole plants are being destroyed.

Have you ever experienced this Russ?

Thanks Sans2014 for spotting this.

Hi Stush, this disease is the new reality for those of us growing sansevierias. I don't find that it spreads like wildfire, nor does it take a sans quickly once you see it on a leaf, but needs to be dealt with as soon as it's noticed. Golden Hahnii seems much more prone to get it than those with less variegation and all-green sans.

This is the disease that months ago attacked my Hahnii Seibert and I saved with a couple of sprays with Listerine, it's still clean and has beautiful leaves.

Since I have hundreds of sans, I'm sad to say I almost always have a few with it and I'm always on the watch for it. Mouthwash with Thymol (found some at a dollar store) and Bayer systemic are ever at the ready.

It's not as bad as the articles I posted make it seem, but it is a serious issue for sans collectors.. Apparently 2010 was the apocalypse year, I never had a blemish in the 90s and early 2000s. Sans were so easy to grow in those days.

Russ

Thanks Russ, That Moonshine was a few years ago and it didn't spread to my others. It was a very robust grower and then a few spots and the whole plant seems to have gone down hill to death. I couldn't figure it out at the time.

I have a new sans with two spots on one leaf. Needless to say, I took all my sans out on the porch and spayed with Captan and removed the leaf with the spots and rest of plant looks great but I have it alone to watch and water all the plants with a mix of Bayer, Captan and sulfur. Mouthwash is next if I see any signs of spots.

That's smart to isolate the sans with spots Stush. I'd keep all of those treatments handy, including mouthwash. You've mentioned Captan several times recently, I'll try to remember to pick that up just to have it in the 'fungicide arsenal'.

It's too bad this bug has come on the sans scene and become a new problem for collectors and new growers alike, almost nothing bothered them in the old days and they were very easy to maintain.

Keep me posted if you see new spots on that sans, and it'd be interesting to know at that point what you used on it that didn't work.

Russ