Palm Trees and bugs etc.
 

greendougherty - dougherty's garden - dougherty's palm trees - queen - 001-A


This should shed some light on this debate, and please note that they are queen palms...Please note what is crawling up the Queen Palm. They are beautiful but they are high maintenance....I'm glad ours are GONE!

bugs
 

I have found they live in the grass, when ever we have a brown bag of weeds as and grass in the garage we have one in the house. I think the palms have a bad rap.

The problem is the fruit that attracts undesirables - high maintenance isn't my cup of
tea which is why I chose palms friendly to this area that can easily be pruned.

yep- a bad rap.
 

It is my opinion, (from doing some research online and speaking to some master gardeners) that both rats AND roaches go where there is food, water and shelter.
They like to nest in dead palm fronds (rather than healthy, living ones)
They will also nest in mulch, under woodpiles, or in dense ground cover.
They eat fruit, vegetables, bird seed, nuts and sometimes dog droppings.

If you trim palm fruit before it ripens and falls (or clean it up when falls to the ground) and maintain proper trimming of fronds that are in need and clean up the debris,
if you have a pest control service for bugs, inside and out (like roaches)
your property will not flash a neon sign for rodents and roaches just because you have a Palm. (or a fruit tree, for that matter.)

My neighbor was told to remove her backyard fountain because IT attracted 'water rats'. (they actually saw some kind of a small rodent in their yard at night.)
SO… they removed a very expensive water feature that they REALLY enjoyed and gave it away…..
I believe the real problem is that she feeds the birds from multiple feeders throughout her yard and there is a regular supply of tasty birdseed on the ground.
:shrug:

Uptown - thank you for you common sense answer.

We have a double queen palm and a singe one in the front of out home and another out back, we also have washingtonian palm trees and a pindo palm. In our almost 12 years here we have never seen a rat, yes the roaches we have seen on occasion but very rarely now that we have a pest control that knows what they're doing. The people that pull our weeds and trim our shrubs also trim the palms for us. Possibly because were in an older established area we don't have any issues as to new construction areas.

google 'rattus rattus in florida' for info

Yep, Florida, like many other states has 'roof rats'.
We also have snakes and a variety of raptors that love to eat 'em.

If we had a problem with 'rattus rattus' here in The Villages, we would know it.
We ALL put our garbage out, AT NIGHT, at the end of our driveways twice a week.

All 100 Thousand of us.

Our garbage is NOT in sealed cans, it is in plastic bags which are laid on the concrete.
Actually, we place ours BENEATH the canopy of our largest palm, a Sylvester.

A PERFECT smorgasbord for any roof rats hiding on any of our TV properties, waiting for the cover of night to run down from our palm trees and eat….wouldn't you think?

Here's a poll…. how many of us are having our garbage regularly eaten????

It's not happenin' at our house.

I think rats and bugs are in TV to stay and I would rather have them in my palms and mulch(which I don't think I do) than in my house.

I agree completely! Rats would tear the daylights out of plastic bagged garbage if they smelled some food inside. Anyway, you don't have to be a "purist" having all palms or absolutely no palms. I mixed my Sylvesters and European palms with lorapetulums, toubichinas, ligustrums, hollies, crepe mrytles, perennials and ferns in large shrub borders on my corner lot. I think it all goes well together. Palms make me feel good. I think I am on permanent holiday. I often sit out in my adirondack chair reading the Sunday paper enjoying a cup of coffee under the shade of my palms...Heaven!

We love palms. They scream "Florida".

Then again I may not.