Washingtonia robusta winter protection

[Nigel Fear]

Dave you could have used kitchen foil. not only could it act as a shelter, you might even pick up sky sports on it.

[Alexander]

With those Washingtonias outthere maybe you should build a polystrain structure arround in in case of a 'worst case scenario' winter. Just to keep the vital parts of the palm alive. If neccessary you can cut of the leaves as long as that trunk and growingtip are kept frostfree!

Alexander

[Alexander]

On scanpalm.no there are some pictures of good anti frost protection for palms.

Alexander

[redsquirrel]

hi alexander,found the forum,good to see a lot of it in english (i cant understand any other language) could you post a more direct link please,to the protection bit,there is so much to see,its taking me ages finding it.cheers

[Dave Brown]

I have 20m of 2m wide fleece I'm toying with the idea of attaching this over the top of the parasol and draped down with rocks weighting it. the idea is to stop the snow blasting off the covered bit roof straight into the crown of the palm. I'll need to do this maybe lunchtime today before the northeasterlies pick up.

First taste of winter last night with a still, radiation frost down to -2.1C, so got the cover on just in time.

[Nigel Fear]

I have 20m of 2m wide fleece I'm toying with the idea of attaching this over the top of the parasol and draped down with rocks weighting it. the idea is to stop the snow blasting off the covered bit roof straight into the crown of the palm. I'll need to do this maybe lunchtime today before the northeasterlies pick up.

First taste of winter last night with a still, radiation frost down to -2.1C, so got the cover on just in time.

It was blooming cold this side of the Thames too last night, I had to do a mad dash out there to tuck a few plants away in the shed.
My washy is planted out under a tree so will be protected to an extent by that, I have a trellis behind it too so if it gets really bad I can lash a few fleeces around it with out loss of air circulation.

[SteveW]

I'm leaving mine as is again this year.The way I see it is that if it made it through last winter with only minor frost damage then it should be fine again this year.But if we do get any seriously cold weather forecast then I might re position the spotlights in the arid bed so they're nearer the base and leave them on overnight.That'll keep it warm enough I reckon and maybe try and get some fleece over the top of it.Not an easy task being as its surround by the greenhouse on one side and a bed of spikies on the others maybe if I attach a couple of long poles on the end of roll of fleece I could drape it over the top worth a bit more thought that one

[Dave in Warrington]

It was blooming cold this side of the Thames too last night.

It's starting to get cold over this side of the country, not just the other side of the river.

Your all giving me 'food for thought' since I'll have to consider the cold protection with locating a good spot to plant out my Washies in the garden next year or build a 'mega-brolly'

Good luck with the weather

[Vic]

Good work Dave, certainly worth the effort.

My washy has a rain shelter, with a spot at the bottom for nights like tonight when its nearly -4 already

[Dave Brown]

With the wind direction and origin they are showing it looks similar to 1987 here. Not taking any chances so added some redundant rope lights around the trunk. These are to be left on while temps are below zero. Never done this before, so I do not know how much heat they produce, but the lights consume about 220w. I'm not wrapping now as having looked at it yesterday it was impractcal for the size of the palm.

[dino]

It looks really Christmassy Dave

[redsquirrel]

you'll have the mice using them as a helter skelter keeping their nonads warm

[Damian]

Expecting a -2 in the next couple of days so I have rigged up a shelter to protect my washy, hope it works!

100_0548 (Small).jpg (53.88 KiB) Viewed 2245 times

sorry about the crappy photos!!

[Las Palmas Norte]

Best of luck Damien. I did the same last year but a one night low of -14°C was too much and the palm perished. I could have added some supplimental heat but ... I'm a procrastinator.

Fast forward 10 years Dave. You may need a scaffold errected to duplicate this effort . Keep us posted!

Cheers, Barrie.

[Dave Brown]

That looks a bit wind battered Damien, are you in a windy location. Mine looks like that sometimes at the end of the winter.

Have you taken some of the leaves off? The protection looks ok, you have the ventilation and the rain/frost cover.