Mrs B R Cant is about 4 1/2 but she was really slow to take off. She is in the middle of an 8ft section of fence and take up the whole section though she is really really heavy on that one side. I usually just prune the dead or damaged canes but the one thing I was always concerned about and perhaps should have taken care of it when she was younger is the two thick canes that are crossing and actually rubbing against each other. I wasn't sure if I should go ahead and prune that or what but if I did it would take a lot of the bush with it. DdB is 4 years old and has actually always had a very lovely shape never really lobsided but grew this one cane (or lateral) out the top that it can't support (the one in the picture) that's the one I was just wondering if I should go ahead and prune. When in bloom and especially after a rain she gets weighed down so much and starts to lean away from the fence. I have checked and I haven't seen any signs of her uprooteing I'm just afraid she will. I have heard about the teas growing horizontal like that (talking about B R Cant) but that is crazy! lol Her shape annoys me right now but she makes up for it in her abundance of blooms throughout the year. I might just go ahead and cut that one cane by half but I will leave Mrs B R Cant alone for now and hope she starts to balance out soon unless someone thinks I should do something about that crossing cane which you can see in the picture. Thanks Sherry! ~Meghan

Hello, I have same ? as Stephen......where do I cut? Just below the green top, someplace along the stem with the papery remains of expired leaves, or anywhere I choose along the stem? I have a 25 yr old potted plant that is now about 6' high with a single, straight stem. Over the past couple of years I've considered lopping off the top -- to reduce it's height & make a mor interesting looking plant. I ordinarily do not fertize often, but given my plans, I thought it might be q food idea to give a little boost to get it ready to produce leaves. It now has to sprouts along the base of the stem & I can see some additional "bumps" along the stem that will burst forth soon!! This has never happened before! Looks like this may be exactly the time to prune my ponytail -- can some one give me some tips??

What part of the RR/Austin area are you moving to? The winter lows are moderated nearest the downtown area and nearby neighborhoods due to a small urban heating effect on calm, cold nights. I can't say I've seen any ponytail palms in the ground in the Austin area. Without winter protection, I doubt they would last too long in the ground; but one could always try. There are a few good sized Queen palms planted near Taco Cabanas at two locations: south of the lakes downtown & some on highway 79 neat Redbud lane. A cold winter could certainly kill them without protection, but if they are near a building facing south and have some added heat, they can do alright at least for a few years. I have one in front of my home for 3.5 years. I planted it as a 7 gallon palm from HD that was perhaps 6 feet to the tallest frond. I've put C9 Christmas lights (w/o a sheet or tarp to trap the heat) on it to protect the trunk and bud from the winter. The coldest it has seen was 17 degrees for a low temp. Some tips were a little brown on the fronds, but it didn't lose those fronds. It is now about 22 feet tall to the topmost frond and the trunk is about 1.5-2 feet in diameter at the base. Drip irrigation and fertilizer help a lot. I have some smaller ones in my backyard on the north side that were planted as 3 gals 2 years ago, they have handled the cold without any protection and are growing at a good rate. Others in my neighborhood have planted Queens in the past few years and they are doing well. They don't cost very much at these small sizes, and seem to grow pretty well, so you might try them as an experiment. These queen palms might be a slightly different variety compared to those from Florida as the Texas varieties seem more robust, but perhaps that is just due to the soil and nutrients available. If you can find them, there are hybrids between the Butia and Queen (and some other combos as well) that should handle the worst of the cold weather better than a Queen and grow faster than a Butia. As other posters mentioned, if you want trunk forming palms, the California and Mexican Fan palms do well, with the California being much hardier to the cold and ice here. The Butia (Jelly) plams do fairly well except in heavy limestone and are cold tolerant. Sabal palms are also very tough. Windmill palms seem to grow well and are pretty cold hardy. Date palms seem to grow well, but a record cold outbreak cold kill almost any palm, with a trunk, as the all time low is below zero. Good luck.

Hi, Beth. Root congestion creates stress, which is made manifest in a plant that doesn't grow. When a plant isn't growing it's an indication it's, at best, at a break-even point in terms of it's ability to create enough food (plants make their own food, sugar and other biocompounds, during photosynthesis) and obtain enough nutrition to fuel growth. Whenever a plant is creating more energy/food than it needs to keep its systems humming along, it grows additively (gets thicker) and multiplicatively (grows more leaves and branches, and it stores the surplus in files of cells laid down in the cambium. If/when you repot, and it's better to repot than pot up, you'll see what you think is a growth spurt, but it's really not a growth spurt. What you'll see id the plant returning to how it would normally have been growing were it not for the root congestion. You'll often hear growers advise others the plant prefers to be root bound, but rood bound = stress, and no plant performs better (insofar as it's level of vitality is concerned) under stress than it does when free of stress. Granted, the plant is very well known for it's tolerance of stress due to tight roots and other cultural factors, but what a plant tolerates has nothing to do with what it prefers. I'd do a full repot into a very fast draining and well-aerated medium and start it on a regular fertilizing program that takes into consideration the fact that it tends to go quiescent in the darker months of winter. Al