Today was the day that I got my winter palm enclosures ready. For those of you with this board last winter, you'll know I had double poly enclosures framed with 2x2's. Well, today I took measurements of my palms to see what I needed to do to make the enclosures work. Last year my washingtonia robusta enclosure was 50 inches tall and fit the palm with lots of room inside. This year I had to increase the enclosure to 68 inches and it's a TIGHT fit for the palm. Last year the fronds were about 24 inches across. This year, they are 36 inches! My enclosure is 30 inches wide, so I'm going to try to get one more year out of it before I have to build a new one from scratch. I'm gonna fold the fans up in there all nice and snug. I can't believe how much this palm has grown, and this has been the coldest summer ever. I'm also putting white styrofoam on the outside of the enclosures this winter on the walls that don't receive sun to help regulate the temperature better. Should help with leaf burn on the plastic too.

On the other hand, the enclosure for the trachycarpus fortunei will work again. It grew about 6 to 8 inches this year. I think it was working more on filling out versus growing tall this year. It filled out nice in the crown.

I dug up my butia capitata and washingtonia robusta in the back yard and put them in pots. The washingtonia was defoliated last year from a GFI failure and only grew 5 fronds this summer, and the butia only grew 2 fronds all summer. I'm gonna keep them inside in the winter until they get more mass on them. Probably won't plant them out until I'm in my new house. I plan on moving in about 2-3 years, so I figured dig them now before they got too massive. If I can't move my front yard display with me, oh well. I'd rather have palms in the front yard now anyway to show off with 🙂 My butia and washingtonia will be patio palms until the move and hopefully will start growing faster.

So this year I'm protecting (1) trachycarpus fortunei and (2) washingtonia robusta in the front yard. Little downsized from last year. With limited funds this year I figure its best to go all out on three palms than do a half ass job on five.

When my washy gets larger, probably next year, I'm going to need to figure out a way to suck the fronds in without damaging them. Last year I just tied the petioles up with zip ties and let the fronds bush out above that. Gonna need to suck them in also in a year or two, so I don't need to build 4 ft by 4 ft boxes!!