Kent looks like your protection method works good. Thanks for mentioning Garden safe fungicide 3. Ill have to see if I can get some here. Post some pics as winter progresses.

John

Kent,
Good luck with them. I have a few Sabals to plant next spring, looking forward to see how yours do!

Steve

Steve I think you have more than a few sabals to plant next spring. I just saw a picture you took that must have had 50 seedlings in it.

Well.. ok, maybe a few hundred to plant 😀

Steve

Kent how much warmth is still in the ground?
Have you taken any soil temps yet?
I think when the ground gets colder we will begin to see lower temps inside our protection boxes.
I have quite a few washy filfierias in the ground with carpeting wrapped around the trunk and hard poly around the whole plant.
Don

funny you should ask Don because I was going to post some numbers here today. We have had a couple of cold nights in a row, below 20F (-6C), with no sun during the day to help warm up and last night it was 17F (-8C) in my backyard and it was 36F (2C) under the leaves. The coldest of the season so far. The thermometer is about 12" off the ground so I think the ground is even warmer. I have overwintered elephant ears this way the past 2 winters and they get huge during the summer months. I think the leaf mass and plastic trash bag cover will keep the ground from freezing (or close to it) . Disclaimer; Please note the celsius temps are approx. I do the best I can with the F to C conversions.

Kent
...and with snow cover it'll be warmer yet under there.
Good plan for smaller plants.

Stock up on lumber and leaves for when they get larger. 😆
Barb

Barb - I believe"snow" is a four letter word. Usually any snow we get around here melts pretty fast, can't count on snow for insulation, but every little bit helps.

Hey oppalm,I am very happy that you are doing this! I really wanted to put a thermometer in with my(leaf cages) needle palms but I needed to do it before I could get a thermometer.I will be very curious to see how warm it stays under there,I think the ground will stay closer to 40F(at least) actually or the EE's would not have survived,so there is some indication of how warm it is,keep us informed,I am overwintering some canna austrailis this way,I let the soil dry out and put down some fungicide after cutting them back,then I put a plastic garbage lid(I cut slits in the lid first) over it for some air space,then I piled mulch about 18" over the top.I ordered 3 min/max thermometers but they turned out to be junk,so no measurement of that either but I guess I will know whats what,if they make it.Thanks for posting this,let us know how it goes.
<a href=" " target="_blank"><img src=" " border="0" alt="needle palm protection"></a>
<a href=" " target="_blank"><img src=" " border="0" alt="Leaf piles(needle palms)"></a>

Hey Jim. I am following your other threads and I beleive you may be the hardest working zone pusher I know. Please keep up the good work because it helps all of us.

I think my leaf massses with covers will keep the ground from freezing solid, but I think where I get all the benefits is keeping the snow, rain and ice off the plants during winter and they wont go through the freeze and thaw cycles that we experience in my zone.

Thanks Kent,I have learned alot from reading everybody elses post as well as yours,its amazing what can be done when we all put are heads together.It will be interesting to see what your minimum temps are outside and inside(protection) and I agree about keeping moisture off plants,I think if we can learn when to protect and how dry they need to be we can make it through the first few tricky years,my approach has always been to see how much true winter weather they can take but about half way through I realized that the best success will come from really protecting them at first until they are well established,the one experiment I am most interested in is,what am I going to see when I remove protection from the needle palms as this is something I would like to try on all my sabals as well-good luck

we've had some very cold temps the last 4-5 days , highs in the low 20's F (mostly no sunshine) and lows from 5-10 F. Under the leaf tent the temp shows 38F on Thurs Dec 18, 2008. I am very surprised it has stayed that warm considering the lows we have had.

Sounds like 30F+ worth of protection! I would imagine that my leaf cages lose a little more as the tops of the needle palms are 30" to the top,still I would guess my needle palms are safe down to -20F(outside temp)hopefully we won't see those kind of temps but anytime we have snow cover like we do now it can be 10F colder than if we did not.Thanks for posting!,I will keep checking back.

I promise not to provide daily updates. Our temps the last 24 hours were pretty much 32-34F (no sunshine) , and this morning my leaf hut showed 42F , which is actually up 4 degrees from yesterday morning. The ground is obviously still radiating some heat under the mulch and plastic.