Plant Leaves on Dracaena Turning Brown

Hi Gita,

Your plant is a Dracaena Compacta. There are several things that can cause brown leaf edges and brown leaf tips.

Too much plant food: Fertilizer has a great deal of salt in it. If a plant doesn’t need much fertilizer the salt stays in the soil eventually causing brown tips and edges on the leaves. Slow growing plants, like the dracaena compact, require very little fertilizer. Feed only twice a year, once in the spring and once in the summer, and be sure to dilute the plant food to 1/2 the recommended stength.

Using water that has passed through a softener: Never use water that has passed through a softener on your plants. It is very salty and causes the same conditions as too much plant food.

Household water has a lot of fluorine and chlorine in it: All types of dracaenas react poorly to fluorine and chlorine. If your household water has a great deal of these chemicals in it, allow the water to sit out over night before using it or use distilled water.

You can trim the brown edges using a sharp “WET” scissors. If you don’t use wet scissors, the leaves will turn yellow where you have trimmed them.