I am floored that you can keep it alive in Bettendorf. My folks live near you in Maquoketa so I definitely knwo where you are. I answered a question on another forum in response to you Southern Magnolia. I have a Bracken's Brown Beauty planted and it is in it's thrid winter in Maquoketa. If you have any questions please e-mail me.

Hello to Iowa--just wanted to say that the palms look great--I'm from Bettendorf originally too and saw your palm last summer while leaving the post office on devil's glen--I was amazed.

I live out in the western chicago suburbs now and am growing a much smaller robusta in my yard as well, and am planning on getting a trachycarpus fortueni soon. Now that spring has finally arrived, how does the robusta appear? I saw the pictures online dated March 30 but was curious if any progress made since then? Did not look bad at all considering the temps experienced in December and February!

Paul

clanahan,

Thanks. It has shot out three new fronds since that picture was taken. It's growing like crazy. I was actually suprized that it survived the winter even though it was wrapped. Good luck with yours! I don't know if you check out the Hardy Palm and Subtropical Board but there is a guy by the name of Kyle in Chicago that has successfully overwintered a Trachy, with some protection, for the past three winters or so.

Although it got very cold for a few days, overall, our winter was extremely mild. I had a few tropical pond plants come back this year that should have died (zone 9/10). I left them in the pond for the heck of it last year, and sure enough I've got new shoots coming up!

Hey one (or maybe 3) quick questions iowapalm--would you mind letting me know where you got your washingtonia robusta from? im very interested in getting one of that size and premierfoliage.com seems to be the best site ive found for specimen sizes so far. Also, did it come as 10ft or did it already grow to that? Lastly, how long have you had it planted?

Thanks again!

clanahan,
A buddy of mine from high school has a greenhouse operation out in Coal Valley, IL called Taets Produce and Greenhouses. As kind of a hobby, for me anyways, I talked him into selling and renting out large palm trees last spring. Anyway it went pretty good and I actually just got back from Florida and our next shipment of palms will be here Saturday. We had a few Queen Palms and Robustas left over from last year which we rent out but we also offer them for sale. We're getting abot 20 robustas 3'-4' and 10 more 6'-11' robustas. We have Queens from 8' to 16'. This was my robusta's first winter in the ground. If you're interested in a palm or have any more questions send me an e-mail at jmbump96@msn.com.

Jay

Hey iowapalmz. How tall is your palm? does it have a trunk? i'm intrigued that you can get one to live through the winter

Hi in Bettendorf... I'm in Clinton. Just saying Hello.

Hello in Clinton!

About eight feet of clear trunk. It has one winter in the ground. I should say that it was protected but it did remain in the ground and looks great right now. Protection was a combo of mulch small X-MAS lights and some house insulation wrapped around the palm.

Wow, that's amazing. Could i possibly see some pictures of your palms that are in the ground. I have a few trachycarpus in the ground that i have overwintered with just mulch on the north side of my house. I am growing many palms from seed as this produces the hardiest individuals and i'm wondering if you are doing the same and would possibly like to trade. I have/will have washingtonias, chamaerops, rhapidophyllum, phoenix, etc.
I'll take some pictures soon and post them.

Don

Don, I'll try to post a couple pics here. If it doesn't work my e-mail is jmbump96@msn.com. Shoot me an e-mail and I'll send the pics to you. The picture was taken about a month and a half ago and the Washy has since put out three new fronds. How big are your Tachy's? I haven't produced any plants from seed.

Don, Here is the pic from about a month and a half ago

sweet pics. I have a few washies but i keep them in pots as i do with most of my palms. The trachies that i experiment with are still small (about a foot high or so) but they seem to be gaining hardiness with age. Last winter wasn't particularly brutal in terms of minimum temperatures, but it was the coldest winter we've had in a few years in correlation with mean temperatures. Normally we jump right from winter into dreadful summer temps but this year we actually had a spring which was nice for a change. My palms are now starting to grow at a fairly decent rate and i'll definately have to take some pics of my collection. This is the second year i've been in my home and i'm doing some major landscaping this year so i don't know how much time i will have to dedicate to palms, but i have thousands of seeds planted of numerous species so i will soon have more than i can handle. Do you have any other types of palms or just that giant washingtonia. by the way, where did you get one that size in your area, or did you bring it back from vacation like i do.

Don

Don,
I have two sabal minors in the ground as well as a needle palm. It was thier first winter in the ground. They did real well. As for the Washy, a friend and I have a palm rental business for parties, around pools or whoever else wants one around. We also sell them. I got it from Florida last year. Good luck with yours, you should put a few in the ground and see how they do. Now would be the time so they could put some roots out and get established

Iowapalmz... your picture really made me smile. One of the things I love about this country is that people can and do follow their own drummer, and I love it especially when one sees this in gardening. By your picture, there you are in suburbia, apparently without a ton of landscaping or anything, and there in the middle of your backyard, probably next to the sandbox and grill, you have... a palm tree?? Good work!
Don

Hawki,

Thank you for the support.

Wow...just took a look at your palm pics from earlier this month and the Washy looks great! I assume this is still the same one you protected outdoors over the winter?

Question: Since these palms grow very tall, what will you do to protect if & when it gets even taller?

The pond addition looks great as well--you've been busy!

http://s43.photobucket.com/albums/e382/iowapalmz5/

IowaPalm:

This is fantastic. I'm from Iowa originally and lived in Bettendorf for a number of years. I now live in the NW suburbs of Chicago and have a 15' Foxtail (inside in the winter) and a 7' Coconut palm that I'm growing. Along with those, I have a 15' banana, 2 birds of paradise and a 10' plumeria (ready to bloom right now).

I love that you have managed to keep his outside all winter and he's doing well. Drop me an email sometime as I get to Bettendorf often and would love to see it.

Here's a link to my forum with pictures of my palms and their progress. Enjoy!
Ron

Here is a link that might be useful: Chicago Palms and Progress

ptclanahan,

Thanks for the compliments. That pond was alot of work! I'm not quite sure what I'll do as it gets older. Probably get a taller ladder. I can only hope that it survives that long in the ground with protection. I should be good for a couple years though. We'll see.

I'm curious about your wrapping methodology.

Since the wrapped palm looks to not have fronds, do you actually cut off all the fronds before wrapping or do you somehow "fold" the fronds?

As for the mini lights, do you concentrate them in any area? In other words, do you put more around or in the crown to provide more heat?

Do you put them more around the entire length of the trunk?

How many lights do you end up using, i.e. 100, 300, etc?

Do you leave them on all the time or do you have them on some sort of thermostat that turns them on when temps dip?

I'm just curious because we'll have to protect our washie this winter and my "normal" method is to construct a little "Green house(ish)" kind of thing with 25 gal buckets of water to balance the temps and a small ceramic heater or blow dryer, connected to a thermostat.

While this works quite nicely, it does add to the electric bill and up here, electricity costs have sky rocketed to the point where I might need to rethink my protection method to something that uses less power or no power at all.

Mind you, I might also decide, if I keep my current method, to build a 4'x8' solar liquid heater and try to capture as much heat from the sun on sunny days and store the heat in the water buckets..... I don't know how efficient this will be though.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. :)

blondboy--curious how much your utility bill increases due to the greenhouse heater?

i will doing a method similar to yours this winter but also have to watch out for those high bills. just got a notice with my last bill saying an electricity hike of 18% goes into effect this month. yikes!!

Blondboy,

Around the end of Nov or Dec when it starts to get cold, I will wrap it. Before I wrap it I will cut off all the fronds except the main spear. Since Washies grow soo fast, I am ok with chopping most of the fronds off. Within a month after taking the wrap off this year it was looking again like a normal palm.

Before I lay a layer of mulch and leaves around the base, I will take some X-Mas mini-lights and starting about a foot from the trunk wrap them in a circular motion around the base of the palm. Then I will connect one or two more stands and wrap them all the way to the top. I don't wrap them too close to one another because this last year I found out that those little lights actually generate alot of heat under the wrap that I use. I don't concentrate alot of the mini-lights at the top of the wrap near the spear. Last winter I had a thermometer reading temps at the base under the mulch, in the middle of the the palm and at the top near the spear. What I found was that the heat seemed to rise under the wrap, makes sense. Anyway our temps got down to -10 F a couple nights and we had several weeks below freezing. Under the wrap it never got below 37 F. Actually near the top of the wrap on days when the temps were in the 20's it would get up to 75 F.

I would only turn the lights on when it got below 30 F. It didn't affect my power bill much at all.

This was it's first winter and I hope that it will work again. I think that the key is to keep the tree under the wrap fairly dry, I would poke several holes in the plastic for venilation. Also, I wouldn't wrap the spear with the thick insulation. I simply wrapped it with black landscape fabric with the plastic going over the fabric. That way the spear could still get some light. The palm actually shot out a couple fronds during the winter.

A couple times over the winter I would take the top of the wrap off on warm days to let the frond(s) get some air.

Oh yeah, I also sprayed some copper based fungicide all over the palm before I wrapped it.

If you decide to try this let me know how it works for you. Good luck with you're palms.

All the materials I needed for the wrap cost under $70. To put the entire wrap together it only took about 45 minutes. During the winter, the only thing I had to do was make sure that the lights were plugged in on cold days. Pretty easy.

iowapalmz5:

I might give that a try, not this winter, but the next, once the palm recovers from transplant shock.... which, by the way, it seems to be doing now. The one and only spear, which is nice and green, is now starting to open. A welcomed sight to be sure.

Thanks for the info. I might just give it a try.

ptmcclanahan:

Well, last winter, the difference in the electric bill for the main GH wasn't much. Perhaps an extra $20-$30 per month (thereabouts). The year before was worse, consumption-wise, because I put too many layers of bubblewrap on the GH and that actually stopped the sun from warming it during the day. The heater would run a lot.

So last winter, I just stuck with 3 layers and it would get nice and toasty inside during the day, when there was sun. This really cut down on the bill.

The winter coming, I might be trying to pool heater wrap. It's basically mini-bubblewrap, but they cut it to the size I need. I could then just put 2 layers on and cut to size, it would be easier.

But this coming winter, we now have the Washingtonia to protect and I'll be using a heater there too, but hopefully, if I insulate well and put lots of water buckets in there, the heater may not run too much.

Wow! 18%. It's SICK what the untility companies and gas mongers are getting away with. I thought that slavery was dead. WRONG! we ARE the slaves to make those @#$*%&^@#$@#$'erds rickER!

Our hit on electric was 15% which took effect in May. But it's worse. There's a 3-tier charge structure. The more you use, the higer the cost per KW/h.

Hello I am in aw of your yard. I showed it to my husband and he was very interested in your washys. Are the robusta or filifera. Pleas email me at lizajaramillo@hotmail.com I am interested in a tall one for my front yard and have a few questions.

I think we all would enjoy an update on this Iowa palm. PLEASE???

Palmfan NJ

The palm is no more. We had a freak windstorm one night in February when it was already about 5 degrees out and the wrap blew off for several hours. It hung in there for awhile but it was too much. Anyway I plan on putting another the same size in this spring. I guess the good news is that all my southern magnolias have been thriving here. My small sabal minors and needle palms have also survived with virtually no protection, just good siting. Thanks for the interest

Hey,Iowa palms I am curious if you ever uncovered your sabals during the winter to give them some light,I will also be using this method with my sabals and any details would be great!Thanks

Hey Iowa palms, I am new to this forum and live in central Iowa. I have 8 watergardens and about 7 varieties of bananas. I love the tropicals and would like to try one of the palms. What would you suggest? What is the palm in the picture and where can I find one? Any advice would be appreciated on this matter and thanks.

JimHardy
The sabals that I have weren't covered last winter. If it was supposed to get real cold (below 0) I would throw some dried leaves on them. Not much were left of the fronds come spring but each one but out four new fronds this summer. I would suggest a leaf cage with plastic around the frame of the cage to keep the leaves dry. This would keep some heat in and moisture out.

Iowabanut

The large palm in th pic is a Washingtonia Robusta. Not the most hardy but the fastest grower. I chose that one because it was able to grow about 15-20 new fronds in a single summer following the winter when I would chop all the fronds off. You would need quite a bit of protection to keep one that size outside though. If you want a tree of that size contact me in the EARLY spring and I will have a bunch for sale.

Thanks Iowa palms, thats what I wanted to know.I was looking at some of your pics and I noticed that your washy has as many leaves in Aug in a later pic as in may(or less)I am wondering if you noticed less growth and if you think they may go into decline this far north trying to regrow crowns each year,just wondering as I am trying a similar method to yours although with smaller washys .Here is a link to my pics if you are interested-

Here is a link that might be useful: More palms in Iowa

Iowapalmz,

How much would you charge for a large washingtonia robusta if I picked it up from you in the spring? I'm looking for at least a 7 or 8 footer.

Thanks,

Tim