Late frost in El Paso... is my canary island date palm doomed?

[CKorzen]

New palm talk user here ✋ thanks in advance for your input and expertise!

we had a late frost (March) in El Paso and my previously green canary island date palm is now brown. I can still see some green shoots toward the very center so I don’t think it’s completely gone. Water schedule has not changed. Soil nutrients have always been fine. It seems like many of the palms in the neighborhood suffered the same fate. My question is what do I do? Cut all the brown off leaving it bare? Wait to see if it turns around? Is there any saving the brown leaves?

 

[aztropic]

No saving the brown. Trim everything down to the green and it should recover.

 

aztropic 

Mesa,Arizona

[AZ_Palm_Guy]

@CKorzen if it's still got green in the center it'll be fine. It'll just take some time to recover. At least from this point forward the weather will be a lot warmer. Are those the Franklins in the back? My parents live out that way and the same thing happened to their Canary palms, they also have green in the center. 

[Palmfarmer]

Cut the brown of so the light will hit the green better

[Collectorpalms]

Canary island palms survived Feb 2011 when it was low single digits In El Paso.

go to the “cold hardy palms” section on here on palm talk and you will see a lot of helpful information. 
 

https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/forum/37-cold-hardy-palms/

What you are seeing is the fronds browning from the Feb 2021 Freeze when El Paso was 14F. They start turning brown in the range of 17-20F, but it does not kill the larger date palms. It just took some warm weather for the leaves to die. Trim it up and it will fine. Just water and fertilizer it to help it along. 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by Collectorpalms

[CKorzen]

Thank you all! Will trim this week and give it some TLC. @AZ_Palm_Guy yes! Franklin mountains. Beautiful backdrop. love loving here!

[CKorzen]

Hey all! Thanks for your help! We trimmed it down to only the green stalks. Should I be cutting off the brown fronds of the green? Continue cutting? Thank you!

[Collectorpalms]

Here is mine. I cleaned it up best I could.

[Merlyn]

16 hours ago, CKorzen said:

Hey all! Thanks for your help! We trimmed it down to only the green stalks. Should I be cutting off the brown fronds of the green? Continue cutting? Thank you!

I'd probably cut off the end of any frond with dead leaves AND a dead rachis.  They are just blocking light from getting to the green stuff at this point.  If the rachis is dead it has no value to the plant.

Cutting off fronds with dead leaves and a green rachis is more of a judgement call.  The palm could eat nutrients from the rachis, but if the dead leaves are blocking sun then maybe remove it?