Hi all:

A bit of a newbie here but I am a big palm enthusiast:

I have a 4-year old windmill palm that is about 3 feet tall. I live in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and this was the coldest winter the palm experienced, with lows in the single digits many nights, and 2-3 nights down to -2 or -3.

This year I skipped putting up a garden cloth windbreak "fence" around the palm which I read about in Francko's book, and just sprayed the leaves with Wilt-Pruf.

When the polar vortex hit, I wrapped the trunk with a 15 foot string of incandescent xmas lights and an old bedsheet and left that on for several weeks.

After the polar vortex, the leaves started to die back and turn brown. I cut away all the dead leaves in May and doused the trunk and crown in copper fungicide. I gently tugged on the spear a few times and there was no pull (the tip of the spear sticking out was brown.

About two weeks ago (mid-June) after no sign of the spear growing, I gave it a bit of a firmer tug and the spear and the leaf growing out of the crown came out. Not much of a foul
smell.

I have a smaller needle palm which also suffered spear pull but is now coming back.

Now we're heading into mid-July and still no activity. Is the palm dead? I'd like to plant a new one if that's the case....

Thanks for any advice you can provide!

This post was edited by ferricoxide on Fri, Jul 11, 14 at 12:38