Moving, How Do I Take Ground-Planted Becc alfredii With Me?

[Mahalo2]

Hi,

I've sold my house and have two (roughly 3 foot) established Beccariophoenix alfredii palms planted in the ground that I want to take with me and re-plant in the ground at my new house. I've never dug up a palm from the ground and re-planted it before and have been told by a couple of people that Beccariophoenix are tough to do this with. I'd really appreciate some advice on how to accomplish this, as I'd hate to kill these palms. I've attached some photos of the palms just for reference. Also, I think they were a bit traumatized by the Woolsey Fire several months ago as flames got to within 15 feet of them, just to make the situation more complicated. Thanks so much for your help on this...I do appreciate it!

-Loren  

Edited March 28, 2019 by Mahalo2
Typo

[Merlyn]

I don't have any specific experience moving Beccariophoenix, but I am thinking about moving a ~7 foot tall OA one from the back yard to the front yard.  Mine were planted last June at about 5-6 feet tall overall, so they may not be thoroughly rooted in yet. 

I've moved quite a few young palms, from 2' tall pygmy date triples, 8' OA Triangle, 10' OA Queens, up to 15' OA Livistona and 10' OA pygmy doubles and triples, etc.  As long as I took a large amount of soil in the rootball and avoided shaking off too much soil from the roots they were all fine.  I typically do not cut off old fronds unless necessary, since palms will drain nutrients from the oldest fronds to grow new roots.  I'd see "accelerated death" of the oldest fronds for a couple of weeks and the palm would generally start to grow normally in about a month.  The only ones that took longer were two trunking Livistona Chinensis that had all the roots hacked off at a big box store, they took daily watering and 3 months to root in and begin growing.

[Blueman]

Will you be able to give them more space when they're replanted?  They get big crowns.  

[Billy]

Hmmm...I may be off but I think I recognize these palms when they were little runts from an old YouTube video that nicely had some Hawaiian slack key guitar to go along with them dancing in the wind. Anyways, I'm not positive but I think you should be able to pull it off as they're not too big yet. I actually transplanted a couple small 15g Alfredii a few years ago and they did just fine as the root ball wasn't that big yet. I'd say go for it and just dig carefully with the goal being to get the whole root ball out. Soaking the soil might help this process. Just try to get them right into their new home, get the hose on 'em, and start flooding. They might stall but they might also just push right along completely unfazed. Best of luck! 

 

[Merlyn]

@Mahalo2 I know this thread is over 3 years old, but did you end up moving your Alfredii?  I planted 5 Alfredii from 3g pots, they were all around 5-7 feet tall in the ground.  They went into the ground around June-July 2018 and I dug up and moved one of them in April 2019.  Despite cutting a lot of big 1" diameter roots, it didn't seem to mind too much and kept growing pretty normally.  Today it is still the smallest of the 5, but not by a lot.