One issue with Needles is that if they pull at a small size-they will often
abort the main trunk in favor of quantity/the side shoots and you lose the main plant..

Better to be careful at first and protect-I had some of the side-shoots off the side-shoots
pull from our crappy March here last year-that did surprise me but they were small.

It would be great if we could all start with small plants (maybe even from seed if you are a younger person 😀 )
and find the strongest of the group and plant those! I have ended up backing into this method...whatever I lose
is replaced with the toughest of the smaller palms I have-got a real cold hardy Takil and Tesan in that group
and a few Manipur and Takil in pots that have made it where other have pulled-it will be fun to see how these handle
cold later as they get bigger.

@Jim, we all did have a totally crappy spring. Wet heavy snow here in Omaha first week in MAY totally sucked, and damaged some stuff I had put outside. Cool temps just added to the frustration.

Yea...I think we had our warmest march(2012)followed by our coldest(2013)...lots of snow
in late Feb/March,I really hope this early and brisk start to "winter" will have us enjoying an
early spring in March(at least decent)-I would also love to see what the tropicals could do
if we ever had even normal/+ rainfall again.

BTW

I was reading on the forecasters discussion this morning that there could be a major winter storm in a week....

My needle has been in the ground a few years now..it has almost a foot of trunk and I don't so alot for it. last year it had a bag of straw over it..this year it has burlap wrapped and some plastic over the burlap top to keep the rain off..im sure wind and all gets in there with out a problem and I see no bad signs yet. It might have helped a spear was emerging when it was raining to keep the crown packed well and not let as much moisture in... I also left a potted chinese fan out b/c I didn't have a place to put it..2 of the 4 trunks pulled...the other 2 are hanging in there with temps in the mid teens already

Mike, have you thought about planting your Chinese fan palm in the ground as a die back perennial? Last year I had two and both made it just by cutting them back to the ground and I threw 3 bags of mulch over the top.(got idea from another member here to buy bags of mulch on sale in the fall and use the full bags as insulation)

Both palms made it even though we had the coldest, wettest spring on record. No, they didn't come back to the size they were I'm sure because they got such a late start but they did survive and hopefully will come back even stronger this coming spring although I'm over wintering them a bit differently.

if it makes it to my new house ill plant it

I think Needle palms are just great also. I just blanket them here sometimes with no addittional heat and we went down to -36C once last winter and there was very little damage first needle has been in the ground for 3 years the larger ones are new almost 8 feet tall . I sent a few of these big needles to a few members in BC, Long Island. Ontario and Montreal South Shore Maybe they will post pics. !!

😀 😀