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Soil, Compost & Mulch

Palm Fronds, a Green or Brown?

16 years ago

I will have to trim my palm trees planted outside this Spring to rid them of dead or more than 50% dead material on each frond from winter's wrath. My question is if they are dead and brown, then they would be considered a brown, but what about the ones with some green left on them? Would they be a brown/green or a brown or a green?

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Comments (4)

cali1023
16 years ago
Palm fronds are almost certainly a brown, and DEFINITELY a pain in the ass.

In my (admittedly limited) experience palm fronds are veeeery slow to decompose. If you shred them and manage to not set your shredder/mower/weed whacker on fire because the strings in the palms wind themselves around the blade, they are kind of like peat moss...Kind of.

They end up being this sort of wire-y compost filler or mulch option. More of a brush pile material than a compost pile material IMHO.
marshallz10
16 years ago
Yes, definitely brown. Ours are run through a tree shredder, leaving very coarse fragments good for long-lasting mulch for dirt parking areas.

[Of course, mixing the frond pieces with Milorganite....]

:>)
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Good job posting the links as the embedded pics didn't work for me. Every other day seems a bit much to me if they're in the ground, but it doesn't sound like you're drowning them either. The leaf loss in your pics looks pretty minimal/normal for a transplanted one, especially since they mostly seem to be the older fronds, but let's see what our other members say too. I'd just just make sure they get lightly dry between watering (mine get watered twice a week at this time of year) and then not to sweat the older fronds yellowing/browning, especially after a recent transplant. I think your plants look pretty good overall. Good luck and keep us posted, Grant
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10C or 50F is not a chance for a Washingtonia. I went through that and gave up 7B/8A climates and long terms survival for any palms other than Trachys, Sabals and an occasional Butia. Even in zone 11 here they don't look at their best. My Washingtonia was killed at 14F just one night of 14F and one day of 30F was enough for all my Washies. In fact Wash. filifera is not doing well in a rainy climate or a semi-shade or both, I would not take a chance either in a rural area zone 8 with any of the Washies. 8 years experience talking. Now I am in a zone 11 without much heat, so it may not be a true zone 11 since the low temps March the 11B but high temps are never above 80F. Even the 80F is reached a couple days a year for short periods. I would say Washies are best for zone 9 and up, maybe marginal for 8B. That's it. Your Washie is dead or dying and even if it comes back, it will not last long. The next winter will kill it. It is now too weak to survive. Move to a warmer zone. I lost too much money playing with borderline zones. Get your plants one or half zone below yours and you will be safe.
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the_virginian
Original Author
16 years ago
I am dealing with much smaller palm fronds than you all are in California, mostly Windmill Palms, dwarf palmetto, Sabal Birmingham and Needle Palms that don't have huge fronds so a shredder isn't needed, although I would love to be able to grow some of the palms that can be grown in zones 9-10, but sadly it isn't to be. I will chop them up and treat them as if they were browns and for the most part they disappear fairly quickly in my compost pile.
gardenlen
16 years ago
i suppose if they still have some green in them they could then be considered to be somewhat green but mostly brown, on some of the larger palms i used to have i would take the frond while it was still very much green but showing signs of dying off, they were then easier to shred (we have a shredder over here that does palm fronds well, or any of that sort of fibrous material from the garden fantastically).

len

Here is a link that might be useful: len's garden page

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