Ponytail palms are really good at handling damage. Mine was really badly damaged by scale (I mean really bad), so bad that I had to strip off every leaf except for the very middle leaves. These leaves were leaning over and could not even support itself so I had to tape them for a month. Now its slowly growing back scale free and the new leaves can finally support itself. Just goes to show how willing they are to grow. As long as its respouting, its far from dead and just handle it as you would normally, water on warm days and keep it in a nice sunny spot. Some fertilizer would really help too. Good luck!

I'm in the Orlando area which is Zone 9D. Foxtails do fine in zone 9D. The last freeze was in 2010. If temps go to 27 degrees or lower your foxtails will die. I think the issue here is that most foxtails are grown in two areas of Florida in palm tree fields. If you have palms installed directly from the fields you'll have to water constantly and fertilize constantly. When palms are dug from the fields where they're grown they leave 70% of their nutrients in the field. If you want huge palms then you're going to have to have it come from a field. Reputable palm tree growers have learned that foxtails need to be taken from fields and immediately wrapped in plastic (emulating a pot) and then watered and fed aggressively before being sold and installed in a customers yard. Very few growers do this so you have a few choices. The best choice is to go with the largest pot grown foxtail you can find. Also, on any palm tree...If you see the very center fronds turn brown then the tree will die completely. Foxtails are self-cleaning meaning the fronds will drop on their own and you don't need to pay to have them trimmed. So there's no reason for the middle fronds to be accidentally trimmed. So if they turn brown it's not due to your landscaping service. They need to be fed three times a year and they grow very! So it's best to go with a container grown foxtail rather than a field grown one since they're fast growing. We're getting ready to have three planted and I'm going all the way to south Florida to get mine from growers who don't plant them immediately after harvesting them from the fields. You really do have do to your homework on palm trees. We almost went with ribbon palms because of the freeze factor with foxtails but it's been decades since we've had a hard freeze and if we lose them to a freeze it's our fault. If you buy them and lose them for any other reason then it could be your fault if you don't water them daily until they're established and fertilize more than 3 times a year for a while. They're beautiful palms and under the right circumstances they'll grow fine in Orlando. Be careful where you source them and ask questions!

The only damage we had was a Papaya Tree which blew over. It was full of fruit. A few orchids got blown out of trees but no damage. Harvey, we did not lose power (surprise!) so things went fairly well. The biggest problem was moving all the orchids back to their spots. I had spent two days moving hundreds of plants, both orchids and 'dirt' plants to afford shelter. All survived!Except my poor Papaya! Photo taken from my front door showing the wind. My large Pachira Tree blew over and landed on many orchids! All survived, a few broken clay pots and I finally dragged that big tree under the roof and tied it down. Jane

I assume one of my first steps is to get it into different soil. Yes? No? It doesn't necessarily need to be the first step, but it is an important step if you want your plant to thrive instead of just survive. If you think about it for a moment, you'll realize you get a sense of satisfaction from nurturing things. The better you become at nurturing, the greater the level of satisfaction. Very often, the soil your plants are in is the source of serious limitations. If your soil compacts and/or holds too much water, root function and health are impaired, which means your plant is limited in its ability to realize its potential. Root congestion (being root-bound) also limits plants' ability to grow and to function normally; it limits growth and saps a plant's vitality. We see living proof of this when we free a PT from its pot, remove the soil from its roots (I've seen them so rootbound a chisel was required to remove the calcified soil), and repot them into a larger pot and an appropriate soil. Something like this: As soon as the plant has recovered from the repot, it exhibits what most growers would consider to be a growth spurt; but it's not a growth spurt at all. What you see after repotting a root-bound plant or one suffering the limitations associated with a poor soil is the plant returning to a level of vitality (health) it might have been enjoying all along had the grower not neglected the root maintenance required for this plant to 'thrive' in a container. The effects of root congestion start to take a toll on growth rate and the plant's o/a level of vitality at the approximate point in time when the root/soil mass can be lifted from the soil intact, and progresses in a direct relationship with how congested the roots are allowed to become. So, you might think about moving toward a soil you won't have to fight for control of your plant's health in early summer - as in somewhere near the summer solstice (or Father's Day, in the N hemisphere). The one it's in now appears to be extremely water retentive and compacted, so you'll need to be extremely careful not to over-water - especially during the winter; whereas, if the plant was in the soil pictured above, the likelihood you would get into over-watering trouble would be only a tiny fraction of what it appears it would be in the soil your plant is presently in. And is the mossy substance growing on the caudex a bad omen? Any help is greatly appreciated! What happens when you dip a paper towel into a source of water? You can see the water rise up through the paper towel. That's capillary action. The surface of the soil your plant is in is remaining wet for longer than it should. This allows water in the soil to move upward on your plant's caudex and supply a water source that supports the algae or moss that's evident in the picture. While it can't be said with certainty that this evidence is a messenger of ill to come, it is hard evidence you need to be very careful about watering. There are many cases where someone will tell you to avoid watering all winter, because it's better to have your plant suffer the limitations associated with a water deficit than it is to chance over-watering, which can cause root rot. The better advice is to use a soil that eliminates the potential for root rot and allows you to water, so you're also avoiding drought stress. We find the same type of advice when it comes to fertilizing indoor plants in the winter, but that's a topic for another day. You might find this to be of value. Al