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Holy cow. Where are you located? Can you describe your protection methods? Great pics!!!

Arctic
You have to realy want to grow those bad to have to protect them from that ! You ... are a true zonejumper !
GREAT JOB

Wow! That third picture down is just about depressing...your definately a palm hero!

Say arctic!
You live at the north pole????
Are you in 3 months of darkness now???
Absolutely the best protection I ever saw!!!
Great job!
Tip my hat to you!
Don

That's amazing.

Can you describe how you build your structure and what you use? Is there any heat source inside such as rope lights? What is the lowest temps they have seen so far this winter(protected)? Do you open them up on nice days or do they stay that way for months? Also curious what lows they have seen unprotected. You give me hope for next winter when my Windmill and Needle will attempt their first winter in the ground. Keep up the good work!

Dear Mr Arctic - please tell us your secrets. single or double walled plastic? heat source inside the palm huts?

Very nicely done. You apparently take great pride in building your structures.

Beautiful Humulis. I really give u credit. I wouldn't try to plant one of those here in zone 6, nonetheless in zone 4! Amazing specimen.

I live near Logan, Utah in a beautiful mountain valley called Cache Valley. We have had -45 temperatures before. I started over 10 years ago with one gallon size plants, so they have grown quite a bit since then. The boxes are made of 2" thick blueboard styrofoam and pine lumber. Clear plastic keeps the weather away from the boxes. I used to use a couple of incadescent bulbs, but they burn out too soon, so I switched to screw-in flourescent bulbs. I have an 8' box and 6' box with three light bulbs, and a two 4' boxes with two bulbs. I also have some smaller boxes for banana plants. I put the boxes over the palms the last part of October or first part of November, and don't take them off until April. They get no sunlight during this time period. When I take the boxes off, the plants look as healthy and green as the day I put the boxes on. One year, we had -39 degrees. One of the palm boxes only had one incadescent light bulb. The second one had burned out. The palm survived with no problem. Sometimes the very youngest fronds get too frozen to grow, but the older fronds aren't bothered with whatever the temperature is inside. I have no idea how cold it gets inside. I have an 8' Windmill palm, a 4' female Mediterranean Fan Palm, a 6' male Mediterranean Fan Palm and an 4' Pindo Palm that all do very well. I have included a picture of the female Mediterranean Palm that I did not include before.

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WoW!
Nice palms! Its nice to see someone being that sucessful in a climate that severe! Here all I do it wrap the palms (much smaller then yours) with frost cloth, put down a layer of mulch and let the sow insulate them until spring... I'm going to try a temporary heated greenhouse on a Trachy. wagnerianus next winter... I probably heat with one of those cables for keeping pipes from freezing and the greenhouse will be a wood frame with a double layer of heavy gauge plastic... What do you think?

Wow !! Beautiful..

Thanks pchafe. There's all sorts of ways to protect palms. The heating cables should work. You may want to include bubble wrap. I keep in touch with someone in Bountiful, Utah, zone 6, who has purchased about 5-6 20' palms from San Diego. He protects them with Christmas lights and bubble wrap, but uses a thermostat to regulate the lights since sometimes they can get too hot and burn the foilage. It's fun to experiment! I have built the styrofoam boxes because it is such a good insulator, and doesn't require much heat (flourescent light bulbs) in order to keep them warm. My electric bill doesn't really go up that much in the winter.

I noticed you have several elephant ears growing. Do you dig them up to bring in for the winter? That would be quite a chore! Beautiful pics. Well done :)

Thanks protempsfish. They do very well in raised beds. Those in filtered sunlight can get up to 6' high. I started 20 years ago with a few bulbs and now have hundreds. I sell a lot of elephant ears and cannas to local nurseries. Unfortunately, I do have to dig them all in the Fall and store in my basement.

Anybody can grow a palm tree in Florida; yours is a work of art!

Your pictures inspired my DH to get out and clean up our yard.
Beautiful amazing work.
How do you get a male and female palm tree?
I have never seen them labeled as such.

Some palm species have separate sexes. Mediterranean Fan Palms happen to be one of them. When I bought them years ago as one gallon plants, I had no idea what I was getting. Several years ago, they both started putting out what I thought were inflourescent stalks, but they were different. Neither one produced seed. The next year, I determined that one was actually a pollen bearing stalk. I broke off the pollen stalk, pollinated the female inflourescence by hand, and got a large bunch of seed at the end of the Fall. The male tree is a green colored, robust plant. The female tree is more blue colored and has finer leaves than the male plant. Sounds like even in the plant world, males are different than females. Actually, I think they are different varieties of the same plant.