I presume the zone 4 minimum winter temps you must endure are not of extended duration?

Hi gusolie! Actually, I've experienced -45 F. temperatures where I live. Some winters we've gone a week at a time where the temperature never got above 0 F. The reason they survive is because of the 2" thick styrofoam boxes I built to protect them in the winter. I have three screw-in flourescent light bulbs inside to give them a little warmth. The small amount of heat that the light bulbs put off actually builds up quite nicely inside these boxes. Here's the box over the tallest palm. I also have two 6' boxes and one 4' box.

I said it before and I'll say it again, this amazes me. I saw some trachys at the nursery. Of course here they are meant to be patio tropical plants for the summer. I am one step away from buying one.

Didn't you say you just took your plant inside for the first few seasons before planting directly in the ground? Was your box hard to build? Do you mulch the ground around the tree first? I know, questions, questions, but you're convincing me of trying this.

Glen

Hi Glen! Good to hear from you again. I kept my one- gallon trachy inside for two years (I transplanted it into a larger pot the second year). On the third year it went outside and has been there ever since. I really think it likes our climate (once I take the box off in April). It's had some pretty hard frosts this year, down in the 20's and it simply laughs at the cold (I would assume). It likes our warm days and cool nights. The box was not hard to build. If you want to e-mail me your phone number I'd be glad to call and tell you how to build one. The 2" thick styrofoam is kind of pricey, but I've got some refurbished 6' boxes on my Med. palms that I've used outside for 15-16 years, so once you build them, they will last a long time. I don't bother with mulching the ground. I just stick the boxes over them in the Fall and the heat generated by the flourescent light bulbs does the job!

Thanks for the offer but I've decided to hold off on this until possibly next year.

I really don't have much room to overwinter another plant indoors plus the lack of light indoors means they get sort of scrappy looking. So, I would rather wait until next year, buy one, and try planting it directly in the ground. That's another issue as I have to debate where I'd put it and also plan this out better.

By the way, how do you store your musa basjoos indoors over winter? Do you dig them up and store in a cold room or treat them in a similar way to your palms with placing a box over them with light for heat?

Have a great weekend,
Glen

Glen, I don't have any Musa Basjoo, but I have Texas Star, an edible banana that appears to be as hardy as Basjoo. The ones I leave outside send up new shoots in the Spring. The ones I bring inside I just repot in 5-gallon nursery containers and leave them in a well lit, heated room. They don't get much direct sunlight if any, since they get shaded by my large Ensete bananas and other tropical plants, but they get enough to do OK until I take them outside.

Kevin

Kevin: I just saw your pictures and makes me feel like an underachiever :) I admire your dedication. I do love tropicals (wrong plant, wrong place--Seattle) but every year I hate myself when I am tripping over myself trying to haul things into my garage. But, then comes the summer...:)

Hi Flora! Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I know what you mean. I spend weeks digging cannas and elephant ear caladiums in the Fall (I have thousands of them to dig). The front of my house (A-frame with lots of windows and french doors) is a jungle in the winter. You can't even see out! I have an unheated, un-insulated hall way in my basement where I keep all of my plants dormant that won't survive outside in my climate like figs, passion flower plants, potted dwarf peach trees, etc. The things we do to grow plants not accustomed to our climate! My current new venture is plumeria and desert rose. Apparently you can put them in the basement and let them go dormant. Anyway, good luck on your tropicals!

Kevin

Great yard, beautiful palm. The only thing better than seeing a coconut in the tropics is a palm tree thriving in a place where it isnt known to be.

Also I love plumerias and desert roses and started growing both this year. I got one pluemria off ebay in march as a rooted 23 inch plant that came as a stick and now it has about 30 leaves and is about to flower. They are both beautiful plants and I recommend them alot.

Good luck!

Thanks tropicalzone7. I wish I had zone 7 temperatures where I live! I only have two plumeria that I bought last year as grafted plants. They are only about a foot tall, so I don't know if they will bloom this year. I am hopeful. My first desert rose was one I purchased two or three years ago on the internet, and it has bloomed nicely each year. It is about a foot tall and has about 7 or 8 growing tips. I lucked out and bought some more from Walmart that were sold as little bonsai trees for $11 each, so I now have about five of them, plus some nice hybrids I'm growing from seed. It's so hard not to get addicted to owning many of them, hoping for a variety of colored flowers some day. Since most varieties of plumeria loose their leaves and go dormant, it's scary now many I will end up with, since I can stick them in the basement during winter!

Kevin

Awesome. What is your box sitting on in the picture and can you give details as how it is constructed.

Thats the best part about plumeria growing. During the winter you can just store them in any random place as long as it stays above freezing and in march or early april you can just put it by a south facing window and let them grow before being taken outside in the summer.
My plumeria is about 3 feet tall and flowering for the 1st time now, but usually they flower around 2 to 2 1/2 feet tall. It sounds like you might be lucky enough to get some blooms next spring or maybe mid summer or next year, maybe even this year if you have a dedicated plant.
I cant wait until my desert rose blooms, but it looks like im going to have to wait until next year becuase its still a seedling (with 7-9 growing tips most less than an inch tall), but it does have a swollen trunk which is a good start. I wish that stores by me sold plants as nice as a desert rose, but they would probably be gone in a day if they were blooming.

Also...
I can only imagine what you can grow if you had zone 7 temperatures. You would probably have date palms and tropical hibiscus surviving outside in the ground!! Your yard is very nice, and defiantely not your typical zone 4. Very tropical. Great job and good luck.

rubtherock, since my Trachy got too tall for it's 8 foot Styrofoam box, I simply added a a couple rows of railroad ties for the box to sit on in order to cover the palm. I stick foam rubber in between the cracks in the railroad ties. Since the Trachy grows a foot each year, looks like a couple more levels of railroad ties will be added this Fall. Here is a picture of the inside of my smallest, 4' box. This is one of the oldest boxes I've used for about 17 years.

Here are some other pictures of the yard during summer.

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Tropicalzone7, here is a picture of last year's desert rose.

Beautiful garden! I moved from zone 4 down to zone 9. At this point I prefer the plants I could grow in zone 4. They seemed to grow with a will. Here everything seems to just to try to survive. Of course we are having a drought here. Maybe it will be better next year.

Thanks peony tx. And I always thought living in zone 9 would be heaven! I have to find plants that don't mind our cool evenings in the summer. The valley that I live in almost always drops to the 50's at night throughout the summer. Nice weather for sleeping, but not so nice for growing tropicals that love the heat.

Kevin

That's insane !
Great job !

Sorry I dont post recently...
Wow. Love the desert rose. I didnt even know the flowers got that big! Mines got at least 3 years before it gets to that size.
Great job.
Also I like the 2nd trellis with the flowering vine alot. I cant rememeber the name of that flower! They grow in the forests over here alot, but they dont look as nice as that.

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks tropicalzone7. Since the desert rose bloomed, I've got kind of hooked on growing them as well as plumeria, a relative of desert rose. I purchased some desert rose plants from WalMart as bonsai plants that were pretty inexpensive ($11 or $12 each) that look like miniture baobob trees from Africa with their huge swollen trunks. I'm even growing some hybrids from seed that have even larger flowers. It's fun to see the stems of the small seedlings start to get swollen even though they are under an inch tall. The flowering vine over the trellis is wisteria "Blue Moon", a beautiful american wisteria that blooms on new wood, and is hardy to zone 3. I love it! Even now it's sending out a few new flower buds that will bloom within the week.

Oh yeah, a wisteria. I had it at the tip of my tounge. Very nice plant and the great thing about it is it looks tropical, but is one of the strongest vines I know. And dont forget to post pics of your plumeria blooming when it does.

Good luck