I always enjoy your pics! Your palms are looking amazing and that medd fan palm is better looking than many that I have seen in warm climates! The washingtonia is getting quite a bit of size on it too. Its going to be a beautiful challenge in a few years! Your windmill palm is also looking fantastic as alway, and is getting very big! You must get lots of compliments about the yard from your neighbors!
Thanks for sharing!
-Alex

Thanks for posting the pics. I like the layout of your gardens. Your windmill palm is going strong! What a shock you have a medd palm surviving zone 4. Your protection methods speak for themselves.

Looking good-Trachys a beauty!

It would be cool to see pictures of those palms when they were first planted. Im guessing that was quite few years ago.

coltrane

They didn't have cameras back then(-;

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I think we(arctictropical,Mike Jaramillo,jimhardy) will all have to get creative
with protecting our Washy's in the future,they grow
super fast once they establish!

Very nice healthy trachy and actually all your palms are awsome. I can say you and your method of covering saved the life of more than half my palms in the yard. Jim you are very right when it comes to covering the washingtonia but thats one problem I am happy to have. Jim I just got some seeds from a seller on ebay. There musa Schizocarpa. Heres a pic of my washy problem.

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Looking good Mike-

hopefully we/all will be sharing more Washy pics next spring!

Not sure about that Banana-grows to 30'?

Can't seem to find any pics.

How many seeds did you get?

I got two packs 5 seeds each pack

Hey Coltrane..... I dug out a picture of my "baby" Trachy from about 10 years ago. I scanned it, and here it is. It's amazing how fast it has grown!

Arctictropical they should give you s Nobel Prize for doing impossible or former impossible things. I showed your pics to my mates and they still do not believe they were taken in a place with verrry cold winters.
I have been thinking of protecting Dicksonia antarctica using your method. The problem is how to keep it moist over winter inside the box....?

Looks amazing that trachy is amazing. i hope someday my trachies get that big.

Arctic, thanks for posting that pic. Thats an awesome tree. The past to present pics are way cool. The surrounding landscape has really grown up as well.

Thanks guys.... Martin, no nobel prize.... it's just fun tricking mother nature here in zone 4. Here's a couple different pics of the Trachy and 20 year old Med Fan Palm (18 years outside):

Nice pictures. It's funny to me to hear everybody talking about protecting their palms in the winter - they're weeds in my yard. Almost every day I find a few to pull up. The house across the street has five very large ones - about 60' tall and they throw their seeds everywhere. Very pretty, but they get too big for my tiny yard.
I do have several queen palms, a couple of windmill palms and a pindo palm, but, fortunately, it doesn't get cold enough to worry about them in the winter.

Hey, catboy! Weeds? How would it be! Those of us who grow them in our frigid climates consider them to be one of the family! I'm already mourning the day that they die. I had an 18 year old palm that died last winter because its box somehow lost electricity to the light bulbs, and man, was that a sad day when I pulled off the box and found a black, moldy mess.

As usual very impressive pictures, many thanks for sharing!
Nobel prize or Guiness record come to mind looking at them. :)

That's an strange name for a guy, catboy??? Nevertheless, palms in zone 9 are like winter snow in New York.. common.

Artic Tropical... your palms in zone 4 give me great ideas about what I can do in a zone 7.

Thank you.

So, brooklyngreg, what are you going to do in zone 7?

Artictropical, can you please hook me up your protection method and where I might find some plants like these, please..

I would love to learn and to give this a shot!

I look forward towards the links and help..

Thank you very much

Your plants are amazing!!!

Mike

Mike. I started with two 4x4 Styrofoam boxes made out of 2" thick blueboard and pine. After about 15 years, I refurbished and improved the design several times, and built an additional 8' box for the tallest palm. I used to have a clear acrylic panel to let light in the top of the boxes. Bad idea. It leaks, it is not energy efficient, and is not neccessary. Improvements: I now put a solid plywood or waferboard panel over a solid Styrofoam panel on the top of the box and use treated fir 2x4's as a base so that the pine does not rot on the bottom of the box. I cover the boxes with clear plastic to keep the weather out. I have 3 screw-in florescent light bulbs in the top of the boxes for a little heat. Here are three pictures of how I prepare the 14-15' foot palm for winter. You can see one of the smaller boxes in the background of the last two pictures.

Mike. I bought all of my palms at the local hardware/variety store as 1-gallon potted plants, many years ago! My slow growing Med. fan palm has been outside the longest.... I think it has been 18 years. I had two of them that were the same age, but lost one last winter because the electrical cord failed for some reason. The 15' Windmill palm has been outside about 15-16 years.

Nice picture illustration on how things are done artictropical. The only question I have is how do you pull the fronds up so neatly when the palm gets that large? One day my trachys will be that large and I need to know the secret. :)

Hi Artic,

I am growing a butia (jelly palm) and a tracky in the ground. The palms are taking off and last years winter protection worked so well that I am sure I can have my Jelly palm get large over the years in a low zone 7 since you are doing so well with a med fan palm and tracky in zone 4. The Jelly palm would like a zone 8b - so I am stretching it. One idea I had besides covering them and using some lights on cold nites Since I am located in a court yard the tall buildings with deep foundations facing north keep the southside of my house warm providing a micro-climate. I still need to protect them. I am also going to try to protect a olive tree that just become too large and so I planted it. I get olives from it:)

I have a sabal minor but have been neglecting it since its not trunking. I have limited space in the city here.

I must say, INCREDIBLE...You are a guenius!

Thank you for the information..Some day I just mat try this..Thank you again..It is one beautiful tree..I bet the neighbors love it!I bet the drive by's slow down to take a look too, wondering what the heck a tree like that is doing there...

Mike..

wxman81, I take some plastic twine to pull the frond stems together to some degree, then I take treated burlap tree wrap to wrap the fronds tightly together. It's the only way to fit them under the box. brooklyngreg, good luck with your palms! I wish we had zone 7 weather. You'll have to post some pics of your palms. Mike, you're welcome! Yeah, I live off the "beaten path", so don't get a lot of traffic in front of my place, but yes! I do get a lot of cars that slow down as they pass. Sometimes I get some pretty funny exclamations that I can hear from the open windows, like, "Wow, he's growing a palm tree!" in a loud surprising voice. Ha ha.

Hey Arctictropical-Coconutmike here from Montreal-Canada. I love the way your palms are looking. Sorry to hear you lost a chamaerops. I had a video made of some of the palms I have outdoors at 4 different properties. there are 4 other videos as well go to you tube and type in the browser-- cappadocia & page web these movies will pop up. sorry it took me so long you asked about seeing pics in the spring. Enjoy-- Some of these are 5-7 years old now. P.S I make boxes also but have been using 2 floodlight-energy saver bulbs and do not make wood frame just glue the sides. On the taller palms I am thinking about putting a light bulb at the base. Take care and keep up the good work your garden is amazing and diversified,
Best Regards
Coconutmike