Time for some drastic action

I have had agave bracteosa 'monterrey frost' for a few years now.

Given how hardy the normal form is, I though I would try it outside over winter.  Given it was in a pot, it was easy to move it if real cold was forcast, or if it started to look ill. This may have been a mistake. 

Almost all the leaves are badly spotted.  Given my experience lately and observation from forums, it seems once plants get this type of spotting it only gets worse. So instead of sitting there waiting to see what happens, I decided to remove it from the pot, remove al the soil and any leaf that had even a slight mark on.

The good thing is was that like the normal form it seems to like to offset; not only did it have the pup visible in the photo above, but 4 under the soil.

Removing the leaves was easy, but drastic

Yep not much left. I have never cut back an agave this much, it has been taken back to the very central core. At the same time, it has been re-potted with a thick layer of gravel to keep the surface dry.  Hopefully with new soil and all the damaged leaves removed it will recover and stay un-spotted. I will probably spray it with a fungicide as well, just to make sure.

I'm not going to show the pup, it's too distressing to see it hacked back to the very central leaves.  It will be interesting to see how it copes with the stress. Pups off the normal form are as tough as old boots, but who knows how the variegated ones will behave.

It has been a bad start to the year for the agaves and yuccas, one major decision to go, but that is for another post. Hopefully these actions will be an end to it.  Having always had clean plants, it is strange to having to be removing damaged leaves. I'm looking forward to having nice spotless plants again.