Hi, Birdie. How long has it been since your last repot? One of the symptoms of tight roots is shedding of lower and interior foliage. If the internodes (distance between the leaves) are growing shorter, your plant needs a repot, but winter and early spring are poor times to consider repotting - especially for plants that are stressed and very low on energy reserves. Root congestion can promote blooming in some plants, but root congestion IS a stress, and as such limits growth and vitality to a degree that varies with the amount of congestion. I think the wise thing to do would be to get your plant healthy again, and THEN worry about blooming. Sound reasonable? When did you last fertilize? Often, plants starved for nutrients, particularly nitrogen, shed foliage after 'harvesting' mobile nutrients from older leaves so new leaves can grow. Culturally, you can treat your plant like most succulents. Letting it dry down completely IS a stress, so try to time it so you're watering just before soil is completely dry. Humidity is no problem for this plant. It's glossy leaves are very high in cuticular wax, which helps guard against low indoor humidity. I'm sorry, but I disagree that a fertilizer with a high middle number is a good choice for any containerized plant. There are no plants that use more P (the middle number) than either N or K (first and last numbers). The excess P adds unnecessarily to the level of salts in the soil and can actually contribute to leaf loss and deficiencies of other nutrients ...... particularly iron and manganese. That may be more information than you need, but others too, may be curious as to why high P fertilizers are not such a good choice for container plants. Best luck - let me know if there are any other questions you think I might help you with. Al

Hi Kath - Thank you for replying. Evidently they are New Zealand mud snails which are harmless to the worms except that they are extremely invasive and will reproduce my the thousand within a week or two. One of the people on another forum had them in her aquarium and she had to clean out her aquarium twice with scalding hot water to get rid of them. She had to boil her rocks, etc. as well. So I have to remove all of my worms and cocoons from the bedding and rinse them off with warm water and then place them in fresh new bedding after thoroughly cleaning my bin and trays with super hot water. The only best way to kill the snails is to drop them and their eggs in salt water. So I figure after I remove my worms and eggs I'll dump all of the bedding and compost into a bucket of salt water and then dispose of it. I hope my worms are just slow like yours. :P Maybe it's just the type I have - I have Indian Blues.

Art, excellent! That's the best choice! Your Yucca desperately needs to have the old soil exported and new soil imported, and probably a bigger pot. I don't know if those cracks in the trunk are normal or not. This thing about letting the soil dry out leaves so much room for interpretation, but if it really is drying 100%, that is extreme, and at some point, any/all plants can die from desiccation. If the soil is causing issues with root rot (overwatering) without going to such degrees of dryness, that's a horrible situation for the plant, constantly fluctuating between extremes. If the pot is unglazed clay, the roots are able to access oxygen all around the inside of the pot, even if the soil is quite dense and airless. If the soil is more chunky/porous/airy, so that it has oxygen in it while moist and does not cause roots to rot, the only care needed is to water often enough so that it does not dry to the point of damage to the roots. This is a much easier care regime over trying to intuit some magic moment when soil has dried to just the right point where adding more water won't kill the plant because of the airless soil. Nobody should have to be psychic to keep a potted plant alive. Best luck! These concepts are explored in much more detail in the 2 posts linked below: http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1490818/good-growing-practices-an-overview-for-beginners?n=189 http://forums2.gardenweb.com/discussions/1497307/ukeeping-u-them-looking-good?n=38

Agree with Matt, leaves look rotting but are also sunburned. Rot wasn't visible in other photos. Many of the leaves are sunburned toward the tips... I wouldn't worry much about looking for turface and/or bark unless they are easily found. I went thru all of that (as many others did); found turface but not too lucky with bark (lots available, but is too large - 2" and bigger). So I settled for mix I use, with ingredients I mentioned in previous post (including photo I posted). BTW, I have read all posts by Al. I am very strong 'believer' ...but if you understand principle, you can make excellent mix using materials easily available, without going crazy looking for exactly the same...For example: Al's recipe doesn't call for perlite. But knowing perlites water holding capacity, one can figure out what it is good for and use it as a substitute for substrate not so easily found. There are many other substrates that are excellent if used in making well draining mix.