Give my Queens your best advice

[sipalms]

Hello palmtalkers,

Tell me your thoughts. What is the number one thing I can do to get my Queens to grow fastest in a cool(ish) summer climate?

Without going into huge details into highs and lows, our summer here in Christchurch would be considered PNW style. Queens grow and survive here but are slow. They get quite a few light frosts every winter which causes some yellowing but definitely not death.

What would you recommend to give them the best growth over summer?

[PalmCode]

Mulch around the base, general fertilizer and plenty of water should do it.

[Jim in Los Altos]

Queens are heavy nitrogen "eaters." What works for me is PalmGain fertilizer or equivalent mixed with slow release lawn fertilizer at 1:1 ratio. I don't do this with my other palm species, just the queen palms. They eat it up. Lots of water is also important. Your climate is definitely heat starved but queens can tolerate that. 

[Albey]

On 9/19/2019 at 9:15 AM, sipalms said:

Hello palmtalkers,

Tell me your thoughts. What is the number one thing I can do to get my Queens to grow fastest in a cool(ish) summer climate?

Without going into huge details into highs and lows, our summer here in Christchurch would be considered PNW style. Queens grow and survive here but are slow. They get quite a few light frosts every winter which causes some yellowing but definitely not death.

What would you recommend to give them the best growth over summer?

Hi Simon - They are not slow once they are fully established and have a decent root mass. My Queen went from being one of the slowest growing in the garden ( I blamed it on our climate ) to one of the fastest growing right now. You need to give them time.

Dig in sheep pellets a foot or two out from the base ( High in Nitrogen ) - and plenty of water throughout summer.

[sipalms]

Here's one of my Queen Palms, picture taken a couple days ago. This was planted around April of 2017, with only about 2 trunk rings showing. It has put on around nearly 2ft of trunk since then - when I first got it, the growing point was about head height, and now i have to reach up fully to be able to just touch where the new spear is coming out. Its base has fattened by about 4" diameter and is looking real established.

I still can't believe this is growing happily here. I used to travel to subtropical places like Auckland/Australia and only dream of being able to have a tropical looking palm in my yard. But here we are three winters later, it has seen temps down to less than -5 (23F), and around 30-40 frosts per winter. The bottom fronds are rather tatty and I've had to prune a couple off that broke during a windstorm a while back.

Here's some things I've learnt about Queens since planting this one and my other three;

• They sure are water hogs. After my drip irrigation system had problems, I watered with 2x 9L buckets of water every 2 days, all summer.
• Don't be afraid to over-fertilise (short of mounding fertiliser up around the base!). I put several cupfuls of fertiliser around the base every few months, along with copious sheep pellets.
• In cool winter locations like here, expect the fronds to yellow a lot over winter. In early spring I was pretty down and out about the colour of this palm, but by late spring it had fully greened up again.
• Spray with seaweed fertiliser over the growing periods - not sure if it works or not but I reckon it helps with the foliage protection and greenness.
• I spray mine with Vaporgard which supposedly give several degrees extra frost protection, vital in my borderline climate where cold frosts are likely. It seems to work. Just don't overcoat as then the spear will have trouble opening.
• Mine have all taken around 3 seasons to get fully established. The first two seasons, my Queens only put out around 2 fronds each.
• They're extremely fast. I would say this is putting on more vertical height than my W. robustas now, and its growth rate seems to be accelerating still.

I'll upload some more pictures of the others once my landscape project is complete! Looks a mess at the moment.

[JLM]

Some things ive learned since September 2019 when my queens got planted:

Atleast my queens dont mind frost, only minimal spotting or yellow tips. Mind you we had a few severe frosts.

They could use some protection in the form of fabric or wool, NO PLASTIC, thats where i went wrong.

My largest queen (6.5 gallon) was pushing a spear all the way through winter, so spears seem to not mind the frost much either, same thing, yellowing tips or minimal spotting.

They do love water! Light to moderate watering everyday, they absolutely love it. 

Ive been using suniland fertilizer which i dont like very much, once suniland is gone we are switching to palmgain for sure. Suniland is getting by but palmgain seems to have better results according to other palmtalkers.

They also love the heat, we have had record breaking heat throughout March and with daily waterings, they love every bit of it.