Quote:
Originally Posted by Retiring
I was truly looking forward to one day having lots of palm trees. Is that a bad idea? I had no idea there was a downside to palms. I did know they shouldn’t be close to the house where they can be used as a rodent ladder to your roof. I didn’t know they attract rats?
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I did not give up on palms completely. I kept the short ones. One has an interesting triple trunk. I see to it that those are fertilized and trimmed from the bottom. I do not know what kind of palms the ones that got to stay are, but I do know they are manageable, at least for now.
When we first bought our house, I went to the meetings offered by the extension office. They really do try to watch out for us gardeners new to Florida. That is where I learned that the queen palms here are about a hundred miles north of their comfort zone, although many do quite well. Our houses here are so close together that maybe we have micro-climates or some such thing. I don't know. But queen palms do seem to work in lots of places throughout TV.
Our queens had grown really tall. Keeping up with removing their big seed pods, and trimming the bottom fronds when they yellowed, got to be more maintenance than I had realized. I can be a little persnickety about plants in my yard. I want them to look their best, but those giant seed pods and big, yellow drooping fronds were trying to get ahead of me. (Also, queen palm maintenance can be a bigger problem for those of us who are here and there.)
And then I heard about palm rats.......EEK! I was done!
I will secretly admit though that I really like seeing the big palms..........in other people's yards. But in our yard, I will stick to the shorter, less demanding palms.
Please don't give up on having the palms of your dreams. You might even like taking good care of the big ones. And you might not worry about having those palm tenants show up.....or not show. I just write sometimes about how I got over having queen palms in our yard. But that does not mean I can't admire them.........from a distance.
Boomer