Care of Queen Palms

[noho]

Looking for info on pruning my Queen Palms, what time of year, how often.  Do I prune green fronds at all or only brown ones?  Watering info as well, I live in SoCal.  Thank you.

[PalmatierMeg]

As for pruning it's best to remove brown or yellow fronds. Do not cut off green fronds unless they are in the way of something or a slap hazard. The palm reabsorbs nutrients from dying fronds. Also, hacking off lots of green fronds or hurricane cutting palms is detrimental to their health and survival. Don't correlate pruning palms with pruning dicot trees - they are very different plants. Palms are monocots related to grasses.

Queens are water and fertilizer hogs. Someone in Cali can give you advice on proper care.

[Ben in Norcal]

Queens are pretty resilient.  I just took one brown frond off my largest today, and 3 green ones while I had the pole saw out and so I could get to an infructescence I wanted to cut off before it turned into a rodent magnet.  You can't over-water Queens in CA.  They are pretty drought tolerant, but the more water they get, the better they will look.

[JLM]

Water say once or twice a week maybe more, but if you do more per week then you dont need to do as many deep waterings. I havent deep watered mine for a while since we get frequent storms here. Make sure to fertilize every 3 months or so, do not fertilize during winter. Only cut off brown or yellow fronds as said above. Never participate in the practice of hurricane cutting, any palm with a hurricane cut looks terrible. First pic is hurricane cut, second is not.