florida Palms and Others of Interest

[kinzyjr]

Phoenix Dactylifera - 10ft. - Grown from seed.

Phoenix Dactylifera - 6ft. - Grown from seed.

Phoenix Dactylifera - 4ft. - Grown from seed.

Phoenix Dactylifera - 3ft. - Grown from seed.

Phoenix Roebelenii - 7 years in the ground

Phoenix Roebelenii - 7 years in the ground

Edited December 30, 2016 by kinzyjr
Descriptions

[kinzyjr]

Phoenix Roebelenii (Clump 2) - 7 years in the ground

Phoenix Roebelenii (Clump 3) - 7 years in the ground

Rhapidophyllum Hystrix ~5 years

Rhapis Excelsa (Clump 1)

Rhapis Excelsa (Clump 2)

Archontophoenix Alexandrae - 1 year in the ground

Bismarckia Nobilis - 1 year in the ground

Edited December 30, 2016 by kinzyjr
Add descriptions.

[kinzyjr]

Chamaerops Humilis 'Cerifera' - Just planted.

Cocos Nucifera 'Green Malayan' - Updated picture before cold front.  In ground ~5 years.

Phoenix Theophrasti fighting off leaf spot and pushing out new growth.  1 year in the ground.  Grown from seed.

Avocado Trees - Tallest one around 40-50 feet.

Avocado tree

Bambusa Oldhamii - Giant Timber Bamboo - 20ft.

Musa Acuminata x Balbisiana - Ice Cream Banana ~12 feet

Sea Grapes - Trimmed away from the screen for Hurricane Matthew

Edited December 30, 2016 by kinzyjr
Descriptions

[kinzyjr]

Just a few changes I made.  You can see the new coconuts in the ground.  During the drought, I wasn't sure they would make it past the transplant shock and the drought at the same time, but they are pushing spears now.

[Reeverse]

Looking Good. 

[bubba]

A lot of hard work and outstanding specimens. Bravo!

[kinzyjr]

@Reeverse & @bubba Thank you gentlemen!  Hoping to do a few more upgrades soon.

[DoomsDave]

Dang, great plants dude!

Hope some babies from seed I sent show up too . . . .

[palmfriend]

A great documentation - and a great choice of plants!

Best regards -

Lars

[kinzyjr]

@DoomsDave Should you happen to have more seeds than you can handle again this year, I'll gladly take some off your hands.

@palmfriend Thank you!  A kind word is always appreciated.

[RedRabbit]

Nice job sir! I'm pulling for you with your cocos, hopefully it is just warm enough now to where they'll make it there longer term.  

[kinzyjr]

3 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Nice job sir! I'm pulling for you with your cocos, hopefully it is just warm enough now to where they'll make it there longer term.  

Thanks Red, good to hear from you again!  When it goes below 40F, I tie the fronds up and wrap them with towels and/or blankets.  They are in protected spots just for good measure. :)

[kinzyjr]

Just a few updates after I finally weeded some of my garden:

 

[PalmTreeDude]

Those are awesome!!!!! Great job! Those seed grown date palm are impressive! It must be satisfying to see your own seed grown palms in the ground. 

[kinzyjr]

A few more updates:

 

[kinzyjr]

12 minutes ago, PalmTreeDude said:

Those are awesome!!!!! Great job! Those seed grown date palm are impressive! It must be satisfying to see your own seed grown palms in the ground. 

Thank you!  I love growing things from seed.  The sea grapes grow like weeds as well.  All of them started knee high from Lowes.

[kinzyjr]

I've been slowly working on my landscape plan I drew up 8 years ago.  Each of the beds surrounding the house in the above pictures was a piece of the puzzle.  I finished adding another piece to the puzzle today by putting a bed around the front of the house.  The first picture is a before and after of the landscaping overall and the second picture shows a gap in my hedges that I waited to correct until I had the resources to complete this project:

[kinzyjr]

The following show my use of curved surfaces for this bed as well as the tie-in between the old bed and the newly added one:

 

Some had wondered if this is a rich man's hobby.  The total cost of this project was just under $500.

A special thanks to @JasonD for his new book, and with it, some inspiration to finally finish this part of my landscape.

[Palmsbro]

Looks like a lot of work that produced results, ie. after is even better than before!

[kinzyjr]

A few before and after pictures on my most recent update (completed a few minutes ago):

 

This is a picture from almost exactly 3 years ago (05/07/2015):

This is a picture of the same area today:

This is a picture so you can see behind the small date palm in the picture above.  Some of the stone is newer and hasn't been washed off yet, and the tags are still on the podocarpus.

[Palmsbro]

53 minutes ago, kinzyjr said:

A few before and after pictures on my most recent update (completed a few minutes ago):

 

This is a picture from almost exactly 3 years ago (05/07/2015):

This is a picture of the same area today:

This is a picture so you can see behind the small date palm in the picture above.  Some of the stone is newer and hasn't been washed off yet, and the tags are still on the podocarpus.

Thanks for the update @kinzyjr!

Your Phoenix palm has grown slowly but surely over the past few years.

The sea grapes and other palms in the second photo are also great, and I can see well how this will grow out nicely over the next few years...

I look forward to seeing your garden evolve further!

[kinzyjr]

A Before/After using Google maps:

The Google maps version (05/2011):

Since I couldn't quite capture everything for comparison in one picture, I took 3 (06/29/2018):

 

[kinzyjr]

What a difference one summer can make for Jamaican Talls:

 

[kinzyjr]

Date palms are in flower:

[Hardypalms]

Jeremy

Do you get avocados from your trees?

Thxs

Pat

[kinzyjr]

1 hour ago, Hardypalms said:

Jeremy

Do you get avocados from your trees?

Thxs

Pat

The short answer is yes.  Those trees came with the property and were already ~20ft. when I got here in early 2010.  They, along with the mango tree that was mislabeled above, are Jan. 2010 survivors.  I initially tried to kill the mango and the pollinators by chopping them down because I didn't like their planting location.  They proved impossible to kill without using a chemical like Round-Up, so I figured anything that wanted to live that bad should get another shot at life.   I'm not crazy about their location near the electrical supply line to the house, but the avocados were a favorite at work and the trees do provide a hardy canopy that allows me to grow things not normally suited for this location so I have chosen to periodically edit their growth.  Another annoyance was diving to the bottom of the swimming pool (behind the white fence) to dig out all of the avocados that landed in the 8 foot section.

Before Hurricane Irma in September 2017, my harvest would average roughly 75 avocados.  I had to cut the tallest tree (the fruit bearing one) and take a few trunks off of the shorter ones (the pollinators) so I will not likely see anymore fruit, unfortunately.  The stumps are growing back and the former fruiting tree is back at ~15ft x 10ft.  The pollinators are down to 3 trunks and likely going to be reduced to 2 before the next named storm.  The paper wasps in the area used to love swarming these trees when they were in bloom.  If the fruit bearing tree fruits again I will be surprised, but stranger things have happened.

The last picture of the avocado tree before I had to edit the growth.  You can see how the tree was growing like a wishbone with one trunk leaning over the fence and pool area and the other growing more straight up.:

Part of my 2016 harvest:

[NOT A TA]

There was an Avocado on my property when I bought it also. I thought "Cool, I'll have Avocados!"  but soon after the first batch started dropping by the hundreds and there was an overwhelming amount of fruit on the ground every day drawing racoons, possum etc. I knew it was gonna have to go. Like all the other trees in the yard it was an overgrown liability, so I fixed it. It tried suckering for a few years but it's just a decay fungus experiment now.

 

[Hardypalms]

Boy you learn a lot here. I always thought it would be cool to have an avocado tree in my yard if I was in Florida but the harvest is absolutely crazy. So many collected. Attracting the critters is not cool. I love wildlife and would never harm an animal but I have had my share here of animals raiding my vegetable garden and I could collect nothing. All my tomatoes, cuucmbers and others had at least one bite on them.

I asked an experienced fellow gardener why did the animals would take one bite out of each vegetable and leave them to rot.

He said because they don't want to eat them but drink the juice inside. That made sense.

Yes Jeremy that leaning tree had to go.

Thxs for sharing

Pat

[kinzyjr]

An update on the Jamaican Tall coconut garden.  You can see how much the sea grapes, podocarpus, and coconut palms have grown since the last photo.  The podocarpus are over 6 feet, the sea grapes are over 8 feet, and the coconut palms are ~12 feet to the top of the highest frond.

From the outside of the border:

Jamaican Tall #1

Jamaican Tall #2:

[kinzyjr]

My seed-grown Phoenix dactylifera at ~15ft. forming a trunk:

Silver Bismarckia nobilis starting to put on some size (~6 ft.)

Decided to put a Trachycarpus fortunei in the ground.  This one already has a new spear opening.

[Reeverse]

Those podocarpus really put on some size! Nice work 

[kinzyjr]

A good way to celebrate the New Year - add a little color to the garden (and a few palms):

Before: A very typical circular planting bed for a small oak.

After: Add some Hawaiian Ti, Crotons and baby Sabal minor 'McCurtain'.  The additional stones are there to give the small palms a reprieve from full sun until they acclimate.

New Bed: Removed all the sod around the avocado and mango trees, trimmed the six trunks back to three on the avocados (temporarily as you can see), added some Sabal minor 'Cherokee' to the bed.

New Bed: A bed at the top of a mound for those who were discussing mounded plantings.  This is a Phoenix canariensis grown from local seed.  So many have been dying that I decided to set aside space for one.

[RedRabbit]

I just noticed, those sea grapes are awfully close to your house. You’re not concerned about foundation damage?

[RyManUtah]

Just going through this thread for the first time. Magnificent garden. Nicely done!

[kinzyjr]

On 1/31/2020 at 12:43 AM, RedRabbit said:

I just noticed, those sea grapes are awfully close to your house. You’re not concerned about foundation damage?

I was worried about the same thing looking at the planting bed I had laid out initially.  Before I planted them, I knew of a house that had a hedge of them planted tight up against the house and trimmed into box-shaped hedges.  The sea grapes had been there for a while (even before I moved here).  They didn't have any damage, so I planted mine the same way.  If they become an issue, I'll take advantage of the shovel and the chain saw

[Merlyn]

We had a similar discussion about roots on sea grapes near the bottom of this thread.  It seems that they are either not too invasive or not strong enough to buckle sidewalks, so they are probably okay "near" a house foundation too. 

 

[kinzyjr]

My desert bed - for now.  Medemia argun with Washingtonia filifera in the background.  If everything lives to maturity, some of them will need to be moved.

Gender reveals on the 2 smaller Phoenix dactylifera on the right side of the driveway.  A male and a female, with the male being nearest to the garage and the female being between the new male and the male near the road.  That gives me a total of 2 males and 2 females.

[Oviedo_z10b_lol]

Question about your cocos: how close to the house did you plant them? Looks like they’re right on top of the exterior wall. Probably smart for radiational heat. And I presume, as long as they’re planted young, they’ll learn to lean away from the house?

i have a small green Malayan dwarf I’m working on siding a spot for on the SE side of my house. 

thanks!

[RedRabbit]

I really like your garden @kinzyjr. I especially like how you're using your podocarpus and sea grapes to basically insulate your coconuts. That was smart and it looks really good. 

[kinzyjr]

5 hours ago, Oviedo_z10b_lol said:

Question about your cocos: how close to the house did you plant them? Looks like they’re right on top of the exterior wall. Probably smart for radiational heat. And I presume, as long as they’re planted young, they’ll learn to lean away from the house?

i have a small green Malayan dwarf I’m working on siding a spot for on the SE side of my house. 

thanks!

Sorry for the delay.  They are roughly 18 inches away from the wall at the base and leaning away.  Malayan Dwarf coconuts work well and it hasn't been the case that they have been less cold hardy than the Talls by any significant degree.  If you're looking for a coconut that will be a lot easier to protect and less risk of getting sued because someone got clonked on the head with a coconut, the Fiji Dwarf is a good cultivar to consider.  I've considered putting one on the east side of the house since I have some space in that area now.

4 hours ago, RedRabbit said:

I really like your garden @kinzyjr. I especially like how you're using your podocarpus and sea grapes to basically insulate your coconuts. That was smart and it looks really good. 

Thank you!  Sometimes it is daunting to look at the landscape plan and see how much needs done yet + the changes that had to be made midstream this year, but hopefully it will continue to come together.  If the Washingtonia filifera, Medemia argun, Nannorrhops ritchiana and Brahea brandegeei do well in the new "desert area", it will be epic - especially with the fire pit nearby.  I tossed a small Jubaea chilensis in the ground, but given their track record here, I'm not optimistic.