Arizona's Best, Palm Tree Food

[buffy]

Anybody try this stuff out. It has Iron, Manganese and Zinc at 3%, 1% and 1% concentrations, respectivly. It's manufactured by Western Organics, Inc. out of Tempe. I showed up at my Mom and Dad's house here in Scottsdale and discovered that he had 6 large Queens suffering horribly from Frizzle-Top. This is the only product I found at Lowe's that had the trace elements like Manganese. I soaked this in with a lot of water (no burn showing on the grass and annuals after a couple of days). I bought him a couple of extra bags to put out every couple of months. Should this do the trick in these alkaline soils.

[sonoranfans]

Treeland(arizona ave and guadalupe) in next door chandler(?) has lutz spikes.  I would put a few of the manganese spikes in the ground around those queens and also some regular maintenance spikes.  The spikes will do a better job of keeping the manganese level consistent for a few months.  If you think the soils are too alkaline use some ammonium sulfate(one handfull per tree) instead of the maintenance spikes, it'll adjust the soil pH pretty quickly.

[buffy]

Do you guys think this qualifies as frizzle-top

[freakypalmguy]

Or maybe cold damage. How cold did they get?

Matt

[buffy]

It didn't freeze bad this winter, but last winter they got cold enough to kill some of the bougainvillea. You think that's the problem? I thought the new fronds with frizzle-top just peter-out like this.

[freakypalmguy]

That is exactly what my Syagrus looked like after last years freeze. Looks like they burned before they could push and harden. Definitely give them a good fungacidal treatment in the crown.

Here is link to a topic on Frizzle Top and a pic from the thread.

Hope this helps.

Matt

[sonoranfans]

(buffy @ Mar. 26 2008,21:03)

QUOTE

It didn't freeze bad this winter, but last winter they got cold enough to kill some of the bougainvillea. You think that's the problem? I thought the new fronds with frizzle-top just peter-out like this.

Queens had no damage this year in gilbert, the low was 27.8F, and gilbert is colder tham tempe.  My queens took a burn in last years 30 year low(20.3F), but none of the recently emerged spears were burned, just half of the more exposed ones.  My neighbor has frizzletop, with the alkaline soils, mn uptake is limited even more.  I would spike the tree with mn spikes and put some ammonium sulfate aournd it as well to adjust the pH and supply some Nitrogen.  They will be fine and recover quickly as they grow very fast here.