Looking great Jim! It seems we have finally turned the corner with summer weather now. 90s in the forecast this weekend even! What a strange spring we have had here in the midwest. Still overall I think things are in good shape and a month early in general. My bananas are finally starting to look good. Trachies are growing noticably, etc. I have a red yucca which is already flowering and has 3' flower stalk. Roses are opening too. My triple y. filamentosa in front has put on over a foot of growth in the last 2 weeks. I can't believe how fast that thing is growing this year!

Has anyone visited the Holiday Inn in Des Moines lately? I'm dying to know how their trachies fared...

Mnpalms,
does your red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) over winter? Mine does, and looked good even when most everything else did not.
It is also flowering this year! 😀
--Erik

Barb-

That picture is from the Summit Lake area of Mt.Evans Co.
The elevation at that point is 12,830 feet I think the summit is
14,256?

Paul,
Most of my Echinocereus are from Kelly Grummons
of Colorado and are z4-z5,there is a E.Salm ssp.Obsceriensis
in the right front corner that is only hardy to maybe upper 20s that I will dig up-
if I remember!-I think it has orange colored flowers 😮

Kory,
very cool May so far in contrast to April's +7 above avg
-the next ten days will change that!

So far in May about-8f below avg with close to 6"of rain!

This is awesome when you add the 10 day forecast that's coming up!

http://www.weather.com/outlook/health/airquality/tenday/52556

The Bananas should explode along with EVERYTHING else with this heat!

B.T.W
My H.parviflora is also sending out a monster bloom stalk!

Haven't heard anything yet about the Iowa Trachy,guessing there are fried,
I did come across this video-it's 2 yrs old-we know these palms are in heaven!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_FipsbshqI

Jim,
you'll be 10oF above me on Monday! (use zip code 74008).
Yes, your garden will shoot up by Memorial Day weekend.
--Erik

Jim,
you'll be 10oF above me on Monday! (use zip code 74008).
Yes, your garden will shoot up by Memorial Day weekend.
--Erik

Yea!
That's pretty crazy eh!

97 on Monday 😯 My Bananas,Sabals and cactus will be
confetti after they explode into growth from those temps!

Mnpalms,
does your red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) over winter? Mine does, and looked good even when most everything else did not.
It is also flowering this year! 😀
--Erik

Red yucca (not actually a real yucca, aka "false yucca") is a zone 5 plant. It will winter here too without protection. Mine was planted early this spring so I don't actually have over-winter experience with it yet. I must have planted a good one though since it is already flowering! This plant is only slightly less hardy than y. filamentosa which makes it through my winters without problem so I feel pretty good about it. I'm actually amazed with how much growth I have seen from both these species so far this year.

Yeah Jim that first part of May really sucked. We didn't get quite as much rain as you, but still quite a bit. This latter half of May looks to make up for the below average trend early on. 80s and 90s highs with 60s and 70s lows from here on out. Actually we have been back above average for the past 8 days now. Take some pictures today, then at the same time next week and compare...

I remember reading about the holiday inn palms last year, if I recall right all of them died. The person who sold the palms actually replaced them too 😯
I'm pretty sure they didn't go as crazy planting them this time.

I wonder how the new ones made out?

Bill

Kory wrote
"Take some pictures today, then at the same time next week and compare..."

Great minds think alike,Bill and I were just talking about that yesterday/
I think I would wait 10 days since the 10 day is all 80+/last time I looked-
an hour after I saw them saying 97 here for Monday they had already lowered it to 96!
So,not really that warm after all ! 😉

Mr Bill-

Pretty sure they replaced ALL of them
They put up these ugly ass silos made of corrugated aluminum
or some such nonsense.
Firemarshall Bill wouldn't let them use X-mas lights.........

They are most likely toast.

Here's the last post I saw on these.

From,I believe,March?

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/palms/msg0119321311569.html

Great that you're all getting such nice weather.
We've turned cool again with frost forecast tonight (and yesterday), so all the plants were dragged indoors again.
👿

Corrugated tin silos for winter protection...sheesh, what are those people smoking?
Didn't look to have a roof either.
Talk about throwing money away...

Enjoy the heat guys.
Barb

That is really kind of a bummer about the Iowa trachys. That one is fried pretty good! The only chance it has is a good root base if they didn't all get toasted to.
The guy really needs to invest in some insulated boxes like wxmans if he every expects them to live. If they mostly all croak he might be done at this point.

So did you take those pictures Jim? Your temps are still very favorable for huge growth this week. Maybe even better now the high 90's is pretty stress full on the nanas. They'll love the high 60's at night though for sure.

Bill

I sure like the idea of palm trees around a hotel in Iowa.
However, planting them in the ground makes no sense unless they are going to contract with someone like Jim to take care of them.
In Switzerland, many hotels have big palms. They are in huge wooden boxes on pallets. Each winter, a forklift comes to load them on a truck which takes them to a heated warehouse. In Spring, they are taken back to the hotel. So, my idea (not that they asked) is that they do what Swiss hoteliers do. Basically, what many of us do, just on a bigger scale.
--Erik

I sure like the idea of palm trees around a hotel in Iowa.
However, planting them in the ground makes no sense unless they are going to contract with someone like Jim to take care of them.
--Erik

Or Bill 😀

Bill your right about the temps,last night was only in the low 70s though!
This early warmth and humidity really leaves you dragging but the plants love it!
Some of the Bananas grew an inch in just a few hours 😀

Same here with the temps! 71f was the low last night. I had to break down and turn on the air conditioning this morning... 90 today (already well into the 80s this morning) and dewpoints in the UPPER 60s! Looks like at least a week+ of this weather...

Barb- Frost!?!? Bummer. I hope you guys snap out of it quick. We nearly had a frost in early May, 2 nights in the upper 30s. Was a shocker since we had not had a frost since mid March. All of April was actually May/early June weather here. Now we are experiencing August...

N/M

Yea,low 70s here last night too.

It was already in the mid 80s by 9:30am 😯
Overcast and 100 degree heat index!-just think if it was sunny!

Oppressive humidity after 6+" of rain this month with dew points in
the high 70s 😐 I am wilting 😳