That's awesome! Glad to see you did not lose it. It's a beauty. It will recover and return to its former glory. I had a similar experience with one of my Phoenix Roebelenii. Not the same palm but it froze badly, down to 14F for an entire night. I thought it was toast. It sat in my basement for something like 6 months with little light and pretty much no water. It looked gone, but I noticed while down there getting something a bit of green in the very center. Put it back outside in June after discovering it and it fully came back and is now thriving! Suffice it to say I bring it in well before any real freeze. A few hours at 29-32 wont harm it, but it spent about 20+ hours below 32 and got down to 14F!

Thanks Alex. After many trial and error experiences, I found that the very best way to store cannas is in some large plastic garage bags, placed inside some wax coated produce boxes you can usually get for free at the grocery store. Make sure you mix a little peat moss in with the rhizomes as you fill the bags. This peat moss absorbs the moisture from the roots and keeps the rhizomes from drying out. It is critical that the rhizomes are neither too soggy or too dry. I store them in my "fruit room" in the basement which is an unheated room where I store canned goods. The optimal temperature to store cannas is about 50-55 degrees. They will rot if the temperatures are much lower. Good luck!

It's sad to hear about the Windmill palm. I will try to cover mine next coming winter. I want to try needle palm again. I have one that still has one green spray left. I bought a Bird of paradise today from Lowes. I wonder if it could be covered and be inground in zone 6. I have a basement where my house plants overwinter, in case I can't put it sheltered outdoors. We are getting a freeze (30 F ) tonight. It's rare for this to happen this late here. I brought everything in that was tender. I saw some crates behind our KMART that look useful for future shelters, I am going to try and snatch them up. They are not your run of the mill wood crates. Arctic tropical, what do you fill your raised beds with? Cactus soil mix or a blend you have made?

scully931, you will be very happy with growing Abyssinian bananas. They grow so much faster and taller than basjoo or any other musa(at least in my climate where we have cool nights and hot days). I also grow musa 'Texas Star' which rivals the hardiness of Basjoo, but it never gets that tall. I dig the ensete plants up in the Fall and pot them in 15 gallon pots. You can either cut them off to 3 foot stumps and place in an unheated, unlit room in your basement if you have one, or keep them growing near a sunny window, as long as you spray them with insecticidal soap for spider mites. I have 5 red ensete banana plants in my living room right now (I have a two story A-frame house with lots of windows). The tallest is 12-13 feet high and so it reaches up to the second story of the room. Good luck! Kevin