Manila Palm haul for only $40!

[PhilippineExpat]

My wife and I are so envious of all of your palms so we decided to get some more! We live in the Philippines and have a small garden, so we thought the Manila Palm would be perfect to cram into our yard. We got 5 of them, including 2 of the gold variety, and will plant them tomorrow. It's been super windy here, so we are keeping them inside for the night. Unfortunately our biggest one lost 2 fronds during transportation as a result of the squeezing all these into our sedan. 

[Jeff985]

Nice find. They should be happy there since they are natives. Don’t worry about the lost fronds. It’ll replace them pretty quickly. 

Edited February 21, 2020 by Jeff985

[PhilippineExpat]

I forgot to mention, I noticed one of my palms has 2 more super close to its trunk. As far as I am aware, this is a single trunk species, so these seem like 3 separate plants. Should I separate them?

Also, should I be worried about the bottom of the trunk? The aerial roots make it look weak to me, but I don't know much about palms yet. These particular aerial roots are actually UNDER the trunk, not just on the sides. I am worried because the bottom of the trunk looks weak and I'm afraid the palm will tip over during a typhoon. Should I maybe plant it with those roots below ground?

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by PhilippineExpat

[John hovancsek]

I just got a varagated manila yesterday.  These palms are beautiful.  Good luck with yours they will respond fast to being planted out

[atlantisrising]

What you have there is a nice triple, growing from three different seeds. Separating them now will likely kill the smaller ones. If you want a single or double just clip the weakest one but I would grow it as a triple. Plant it with the ground at the same level as it was in the pot. It is strongly rooted and will be OK except in Category 5 then all bets are off. If you are worried about it just provide some staking for 6 months.

[NOT A TA]

9 hours ago, PhilippineExpat said:

Should I maybe plant it with those roots below ground?

Yes, plant it deep enough so you don't have the roots exposed.

[PhilippineExpat]

11 hours ago, John hovancsek said:

I just got a varagated manila yesterday.  These palms are beautiful.  Good luck with yours they will respond fast to being planted out

Wow I bet it will be so beautiful when it grows some proper fronds. I didnt know about variegated manila palms. We will definitely keep our eye out for one.

8 hours ago, atlantisrising said:

What you have there is a nice triple, growing from three different seeds. Separating them now will likely kill the smaller ones. If you want a single or double just clip the weakest one but I would grow it as a triple. Plant it with the ground at the same level as it was in the pot. It is strongly rooted and will be OK except in Category 5 then all bets are off. If you are worried about it just provide some staking for 6 months.

Thanks so much for the feedback! We decided to keep all 3 and see how things play out. Hopefully we wont get a category 5 anytime soon. In December we were directly hit by a category 4, but it had fortunately degraded to a category 3 by the time it hit us.

7 hours ago, NOT A TA said:

Yes, plant it deep enough so you don't have the roots exposed.

Great to know I was very unsure and was leaning towards not doing that, so I'm glad I asked (and that you responded).

[PhilippineExpat]

Quick update. Since we planted them, all of the fronds on 2/3 of our big green palms are turning yellow/white. This is their 5th day in the ground. Is that a normal part of transplant shock or should we be concerned? We've only watered them a couple of times because our moisture meter says the soil underneath is still wet. We haven't watered them since we got a nice heavy rainstorm which saturated the ground a couple of days ago. When we planted them, we untangled the roots (maybe they don't appreciate the root disturbance?). Another guess is maybe it's sunburn because the vendor was keeping the palms in the shade. That said, I think manila palms prefer full sun, so I don't know.

Edited February 26, 2020 by PhilippineExpat

[Jeff985]

They do prefer full sun. My guess would be the root disturbance is the cause. 

[PhilippineExpat]

3 minutes ago, Jeff985 said:

They do prefer full sun. My guess would be the root disturbance is the cause. 

Ah. For future reference, is it better to leave the roots all bound up and tangled when transplanting? I read palm trees are different than most plants in that they don't need their roots unbound, but it wasn't from a reputable source so I chose to disregard that advice. 

[NOT A TA]

Probably a combination of sunburn, root damage, and they may have possibly gotten too dry at some point. While they'll take full sun as adults, here they like shade and partial shade as seedlings & juveniles. with more and more sun as they get older. I don't put them in full day sun till they've been trunking through a summer with 1/2 day sun. That dark green indicates shade grown with very little if any direct sun. So if you put them out in full sun that would cause the damage you're seeing it in a short time period. It'll take them a few months to rebound but they'll probably be fine, just won't look good for a while. The exposed roots were an indication that they weren't given the best of care previously soooo..... they were cheap! AND,  you can be proud when you nurse them back to good health.

[Palmfarmer]

58 minutes ago, PhilippineExpat said:

Quick update. Since we planted them, all of the fronds on 2/3 of our big green palms are turning yellow/white. This is their 5th day in the ground. Is that a normal part of transplant shock or should we be concerned? We've only watered them a couple of times because our moisture meter says the soil underneath is still wet. We haven't watered them since we got a nice heavy rainstorm which saturated the ground a couple of days ago. When we planted them, we untangled the roots (maybe they don't appreciate the root disturbance?). Another guess is maybe it's sunburn because the vendor was keeping the palms in the shade. That said, I think manila palms prefer full sun, so I don't know.

its sunburn and some shock. In my experience at least just dealing with washingtonias that has been stored in partial sun is that at least one or more leafs will literally burn off within the first week then it will look kind of shabby for 1 month and finally recover then look even better than when i bought it. just keep up with your orginal schedule and dont do anything drastic.

[PhilippineExpat]

2 minutes ago, Palmfarmer said:

its sunburn and some shock. In my experience at least just dealing with washingtonias that has been stored in partial sun is that at least one or more leafs will literally burn off within the first week then it will look kind of shabby for 1 month and finally recover then look even better than when i bought it. just keep up with your orginal schedule and dont do anything drastic.

Nice, that's great to hear! It's good to have hope it will get better. I think we will just leave it alone and let nature takes its course.

5 minutes ago, NOT A TA said:

Probably a combination of sunburn, root damage, and they may have possibly gotten too dry at some point. While they'll take full sun as adults, here they like shade and partial shade as seedlings & juveniles. with more and more sun as they get older. I don't put them in full day sun till they've been trunking through a summer with 1/2 day sun. That dark green indicates shade grown with very little if any direct sun. So if you put them out in full sun that would cause the damage you're seeing it in a short time period. It'll take them a few months to rebound but they'll probably be fine, just won't look good for a while. The exposed roots were an indication that they weren't given the best of care previously soooo..... they were cheap! AND,  you can be proud when you nurse them back to good health.

Yeah the vendor kept these in shade 24/7 and now they're getting blasted by full equatorial sun, so it's quite a big difference lol. Also I agree the roots have had a tough time for sure and I didn't do them any favors. I'll play the waiting game and hopefully they will get better over time. 

[Jeff985]

28 minutes ago, PhilippineExpat said:

Ah. For future reference, is it better to leave the roots all bound up and tangled when transplanting? I read palm trees are different than most plants in that they don't need their roots unbound, but it wasn't from a reputable source so I chose to disregard that advice. 

It is better not the untangle palm roots when planting them. They are different than most plants in that regard. When I got my Adonidia it was smaller than yours. I put it in a pot and it went into full full sun in Houston summer. It never burned. Maybe mine came from a grower that had it in full sun as a seedling so it had already acclimated. 

[PhilippineExpat]

1 minute ago, Jeff985 said:

It is better not the untangle palm roots when planting them. They are different than most plants in that regard. When I got my Adonidia it was smaller than yours. I put it in a pot and it went into full full sun in Houston summer. It never burned. Maybe mine came from a grower that had it in full sun as a seedling so it had already acclimated. 

That's really good to know for future reference. Thanks so much!

[PhilippineExpat]

Quick update. All but one of our manila palms have been adapting well to their new sunny locations with only a bit of sunburn. There hasn't been any new growth yet, but I think it's still a bit early for that. Our little yellow manila palms have been adapting the best and funnily enough the triple green manila palm that had exposed roots has done the best out of our green manila palms. Unfortunately one palm has gotten even worse  We've been getting some strong wind gusts and they have been destroying this poor guy. Even the new frond (it was there already when we bought it) has become bent. This palm has a long road of recovery ahead! My wife and I definitely learned our lesson to buy from plant shops that keep their plants in at least half sun so they won't be so shocked when moved to our yard.

Edited March 2, 2020 by PhilippineExpat

[akamu]

Congratulations Those are great Palms if you have some canopy. In your yard  you can Gradually give the Palms a little more sun every couple of days just move them a little closer to the Sun and keep your eye on them to make sure they don't burn it's kind of like if you've been in the house all winter and you go lay in the Sun for 8 hours you're going to get a sunburn instead of doing an hour a day and slowly working on your tan please give us an update I'm excited for you guys cheers

[PhilippineExpat]

3 hours ago, akamu said:

Congratulations Those are great Palms if you have some canopy. In your yard  you can Gradually give the Palms a little more sun every couple of days just move them a little closer to the Sun and keep your eye on them to make sure they don't burn it's kind of like if you've been in the house all winter and you go lay in the Sun for 8 hours you're going to get a sunburn instead of doing an hour a day and slowly working on your tan please give us an update I'm excited for you guys cheers

We're actually hoping these can BE the canopy  I'll post another update our badly burned and wind abused palm once we discover its ultimate fate. Fortunately the others are all doing well