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One element you need to grow a garden is water, and in a palm garden you can never have enough water especially in my climate. If iam to grow the exotic palms I wish to have I must irrigate them. There are pipes in all sorts of directions, with shifts on top of shifts overlapping each other, I have a bore for pretty well much unlimited water. And every chance I get I water, usually 20 minute shifts. So if you want to get your garden growing get onto irrigation it works. I have over 30 taps throughout my garden most with 19mm fittings for the sprinklers. It’s a game changer!

Iam finally getting back to the greenhouse, with a change in the season it’s time to get on with the property projects. So time to get the welder out put it to good use. So far total cost 2 rolls of welding wire and labour the rest of the materials from leftovers at work, the boss even gave me the two roll of shade cloth. About time as well after 24 years of working for them! My sister works for a trucking company so the plastic pallets were freighted up from Sydney. Not what you know but who you know in the palm growing game!

A picture is worth a thousand words.

All sold. Thanks.

Apparently it’s all about the grain industry in Australia, kharpa beetle, there scared it will get into the grain industry and then the government won’t be able collect taxes and not be able to hold too a trade agreement with some foreign countries. So we continue to send our resources overseas and buy them back as a product, how many washing machines and refrigerators do we really need! I’ve had a headache with customs continually. But oh yes lets import the worlds rainforest timber and get a heap of pest in those shipments!

Yep that’s the way it is, not even a phone call a quick email just asking for them to be placed in the bin, the best part is the rest of the order is held up and as we all know what are the odds of those seeds germinating. The joys of getting seeds is wearing thin!

The days we grew up in are long gone. Unfortunately it’s the way of the world now, technology is a great thing, but place it in a government bureaucracy system and it’s a different story. The difficult part is when I was at school we didn’t have computers to learn on. Now they give kindergarten kids a laptop we don’t stand a chance against that kind technology! Richard

I feel your pain. Buy 10 seeds and each one is inspected under a microscope for fungal spores. Meanwhile you can buy a whole ship load of palm kernel for cattle feed.... Makes no sense.

@Skenny I zoomed in on the stem area, it *might* be mealybugs. If you have a cheap 10x or 20x jeweler's loupe, you can check to see if it's just a "normal" part of the petiole. If they brush off easily then it could be bugs. Some Roebellini have more "spots" than others. I think @JLM is right that it's normal. it doesn't look like a fungus to me.

It will be a long slog for a lot of this stuff. In my mind, stuff could end up perishing due to complications as much as two years down the road. @PalmatierMeg chronicled some of the latent palm deaths from the 2010 freezes.

Welcome to PalmTalk! From the sounds of it, probably a weevil infestation, but a picture would help a lot.

On my climate, here's my data for March 2026 (note, if there's mention of total rain for the season, it's wrong, I need to clean out the rain catch.. it might not be listed on this sheet). I have a Vantage Vue by Davis Instruments. It should be noted, the weather this year has in fact been record breaking, however, it feels as though the climate is actively changing and that the averages are becoming less accurate. In 2022, we saw 112 in Redwood City, an all time high. 784dc10e-015d-4a64-9bdd-6ae22d4f4380.pdf

Well just adding to my blog here. I had my first in person customer today. Sweet lady, home health care nurse. She and her daughter showed up looking for the elephant ears I have on FB marketplace, and they were just kind of in awe of all the stuff I've got growing _out here_. She told me she keeps killing her houseplants, I showed her how to mix coco coir and perlite and stop using potting soil, her daughter was fascinated with the kittens. Sancho didn't make an appearance, and she killed a bee that flew in after I told her I was allergic so I basically gave her the plants for half price and gave her a philodendron. I think she'll be back once more stuff sprouts up. I've got dozens more bulbs to sprout. And then there was a bunch of "ohhhh yeah that's not for sale" 😂

The joys of bureaucracy, what a headache...should be able to solve it with a 3 minute phone call, but unfortunately in this new dystopia the Tech Bros have created for us, you'd end up talking to a bot or an underpaid 12 year old in a call centre in Rwanda...mumble, grumble, mumble.

Colocasia Redemption bulbs sprouted. And I checked on the Thai Giants, they're just starting to show nubs but they are ROOTED in 5g pots.

Excellent news @Tassie_Troy1971 - hopefully your Lepidorrachis will follow suit shortly! Any germination from the NZ sourced Hedyscepe seeds yet?

You're a cruel and heartless man Tim.

Thankfully they can handle periods of drought also - my swamp dried up last summer and we haven't had any rain since December. More work for me now to irrigate by hand! Licuala spinosa seems to be doing well also and doesn't mind full all-day sun or even 27°F freeze without protection!

Livistona australis. I've seen them in habitat with their roots pretty much in standing water, so I planted a dozen in amongst the reeds of one of my swampy areas down here in Tas, they're coming along nicely. We've got winter dominant rainfall, so the swamp is super wet and cold in winter, doesn't seem to bother them at all. L decora growing in similar conditions yellows off a bit in winter, which isn't surprising given it's more tropical distribution, but greens up again pretty quickly in spring. In a warmer climate than mine it'd be a beast in a swamp!

Lol anything that enjoys cold wet winters with lots of rain and hot humid summers where it almost rains but won't? Sabal Sabal and more Sabal.

Of course in Florida you are never too far, at least elevation wise, from water, but I wouldn't call Serenoa a swamp thing. Much more of a scrub palm - its classic habitat is pine savannah. My silver Serenoa is a clustering monster with four feet of trunk on the biggest stem, 6 years old from a little plant in a 3 gallon pot. Planted in full sun, in sand with absolutely no irrigation, way too close to the south wall of my house. (I was told they are slow growing.) Acoelorrhaphe in the everglades grows in standing water, or at least along the edges of ponds. Definitely a swamp thing. Sabal palmetto will grow on any site in Florida, including among cypress trees in permanently flooded swamps.

I see Serenoa growing in drainage ditches by me also many near bodies of water. I have some but are planted on higher spots. I have rhapidophyllums in a semi swampy area. They’ve only been there for a year but seem to be doing well. It’s not standing water usually but definitely soggy underground most of the time.

I did try those concrete pyramids at one point, but they were not anchored. They would move around, get pushed or vanish. I leave one of the spots for bulk pickup, which is twice a month and well-used. Anything placed there of any height and people complain they can't see the coming traffic to the nearby intersection. Thus, I leave it bare. The house in the opposite corner had a beautiful and super thick Areca Palm, Chrysalidocarpus lutescens, right near the street and people kept at the owner to remove it. One day it was 'stumped' to a box hedge decorated with a swear-filled sign. Ryan

Do Rhapidophyllum Serenoa and/or Acelleraphe take swampy conditions? What I mean by swamp things is those that will grow in long-term or permanent standing water.

Sabal Louisiana and perhaps sabal palmetto would be good. I have swampy conditions with inches of standing water in the low spots after a heavy rain. Most of my palms are planted on a mound because of this.