Jim: I did read it and I think the palms you mention, with the exception of T. Naintal I think those are palms that are not long term survivors unless well protected in Zone 7a/b let alone Zone 5a/b. If you are willing to protect palms, heck the sky is the limit, but in most cases most folks won't want to do that every year or so. Thanks, yes, the Trachys look fine, although they have looked better in years past. Hopefully, we will have no spear pull to deal with whe Spring comes.

Could try Blue Crown-pretty darn hardy and I've used it to pollinate Incense with a couple of successes. Although you're right Kiwinut for as many as I've tried to pollinate, I've had more fail than succeed. Not sure if maybe it's a time of day thing or what. I had 3 Blue Crowns survive last year's horrific winter in the Hi Desert of So Calif (zone 8 - sunset 11) 1 of them was on the front porch, did not lose it's leaves. The other 2 were in pots out in all of the rain, 3x normal amount, some snow, 15-25F weather for about a week. Only problem with Blue Crown is the fruit may not be particularly tasty, but you can use it to pollinate, it's hardy and is fragrant, at least mine are.

Actually, I just remembered a long time ago my friend had a California fan palm in his back yard, and it was grown locally from seed. I believe it was in the ground for quiet a few years and it was well established. It pulled through the winters unprotected, but his neighbor hood "code" made him cut it down because it still had the beard on it and even when pruned they still did not like it, he was not so happy about that. But I think I will be going with the California fan palm. Our winters are dry and it only gets really cold here for about 2 weeks until it starts to warm up. I'll give it a try!

If you are diligent about pruning you can control the weight of the vines. You will want your male's flowers pretty close to the females, bees don't always do a good job of pollinating kiwis (I think they are mostly wind pollinated, but bees do visit the flowers). You could train your male down the middle and keep your females along both outside edges and you'll be fine. I may sound like a broken record but ONE FEMALE VINE can produce 180 POUNDS of fruit. Now this may only start happening on about the tenth year but seriously - 180 POUNDS OF FRUIT!!!! I have two female vines. I don't even bother picking all of it because there is just too much. On a year with super high heat and no rain you won't get as much and the fruit will be tiny and on years with single digit winter cold you may lose large sections of the vine and therefore a reduction in fruit, but in a normal year you can plan on 180 POUNDS OF FRUIT!!! I have heard of gardeners grafting their male onto the female and just keeping the male vines under control. I chose not to build a wooden trellis system because I didn't want to do all the deep digging and cementing to make it sturdy, so I used 10 foot t-posts and pounded them 3 feet into the ground. I made braces every 10 feet or so by pounding in two of them in an "X" pattern. I strung metal wire down the middle where the "X's'" meet (about 4.5 feet off the ground) and one wire down the outside edge on both sides the length of the trellis. It has worked okay but the heavy vines are starting to pull it over. So my plan is to just pound in more "X" frames, like every 5 feet and do a better job of pruning to reduce the weight. For my hardy kiwis I just use 8' t-posts pounded into the ground 2.5 feet in a single row like a fence and string two wires, one at the top and one about 18 inches below that. These have also started to sag due to the weight of the vines but I think adding more t-posts will solve it. I use a LOT of t-posts in my garden. You will need to figure out a way to "cure" your fuzzy crop because they aren't good for fresh eating when you pick them. They need to sit a while in order to get sweet and to soften enough to bite into them. If you want to make jam's or jellies or pie filling then they are better while kinda hard and sour, the cooking solves the problem. I harvest in November, usually after the first mild frost and store them in my basement on tables. Some of them rot but enough of them cure that I get sick of them by this time of the year. They get pretty ugly from this sort of curing, very wrinkled and shrunken but they taste wonderful and sweet. The grocery store ones are cured with precision chillers that manage the humidity and the temps. Kiwis are great long storage fruits because you can control when they soften by keeping them cool and then only bringing up to the kitchen the amount you want to eat that week. The warmth will speed up the ripening. 180 POUNDS OF FRUIT is more than a heaping wheel barrow load!