GB 087 Hardy Palms. Transplanting Palms. Vitamin B1. 28:41
SPEAKERS
Debbie Flower, Warren Roberts, Farmer Fred
Farmer Fred 00:00
Garden Basics with Farmer Fred is brought to you by Smart Pots, the original lightweight, long lasting fabric plant container. it's made in the USA. Visit SmartPots.com slash Fred for more information and a special discount, that's SmartPots.com/Fred.
Farmer Fred 00:20
Welcome to the Garden Basics with Farmer Fred podcast. If you're just a beginning gardener or you want good gardening information, you've come to the right spot.
Farmer Fred 00:32
Did you know you could grow palm trees in Switzerland? Well, a little closer to home, there are hardy palm tree varieties that can survive where winter temperatures drop regularly to below freezing. What are those hardy palm varieties? Warren Roberts of the UC Davis Arboretum has some suggestions. Transplanting palm trees, whether in pots or in the ground, can be a tricky proposition. Our favorite retired college horticulture teacher, Debbie Flower, has some palm tree transplanting advice. Plus, we take the usual scenic garden bypasses, to talk about the difference between monocots and dicots. Palms, like grasses or corn, are monocots. Don't worry, we'll explain those terms. And if you're doing any transplanting or propagation of plants, should you use a product containing Vitamin B1? Here's a hint where we stand on that: There's something you already have that works just as well at aiding transplant shock. It's all on episode 87 of the Garden Basics podcast, brought to you by Smart Pots. And we'll do it all in under 30 minutes. Let's go.
Farmer Fred 01:42
Every week here on the garden basics podcast we like to talk with Warren Roberts, the superintendent emeritus of the UC Davis Arboretum, he has the Plant of the Week. These are plants that you may just find throughout the country. And this comes as a surprise to me, being a native Californian. I always thought we sort of had the license for palm trees here. But in reality, there are palms that can fit just about any climate in the United States. And Warren, I think that's a great choice.
Warren Roberts 02:14
Palms. We will talk about palms, and it's Palm Sunday on the 28th. Palms are typically subtropical, but there are a number of genera and species they will tolerate quite a bit of cold. And depending on the how long the cold lasts. One of the toughest palms regarding cold is the Chinese fan palm, or windmill palm , Trachycarpus fortunei. There are a number of species in this genus, all of which are pretty hardy, but evidently that one is the most cold hardy and you see it in Seattle, for example, or the shores of Lake Geneva. And it's in Georgia, I think it's because it is naturalized in parts of the southeast of the United States. Not that
Farmer Fred 03:01
Not that this has anything to do with what we're talking about. But on Twitter, somebody posted a picture of Stalin's dining room, which was in I think, in the southern part of Russia at his vacation resort and outside his dining room, were palm trees.
Warren Roberts 03:17
Oh, yes. Well, he was from Georgia, a country in the Caucasian mountain region, parts of that region are pretty mild climate. So I don't know where his vacation home was. But I wouldn't be surprised if it was in his home country.
Farmer Fred 03:32
I think, more than likely, it was in that area that hosted the Olympics, the Winter Olympics, a few years ago. And they were having trouble making snow.
Warren Roberts 03:42
Oh, yes, well, and some other palms which tolerate cold weather, relatively cold weather, are the Phoenix dactylifera, the date palm, which is the original palm for Palm Sunday, when Christ was said to have entered Jerusalem on a donkey and people brought palm fronds to celebrate that. The donkey versus the horse: the donkey was the animal of peace, whereas the horse represents an animal of war. So that's, I guess, some more symbolism there. You have to be careful not to get our symbols crashing.
Farmer Fred 04:19
Yes, thank you.
Warren Roberts 04:20
So anyway, Phoenix dactylifera is pretty tough. It doesn't like a hot, wet climate very much, but they will do fine. There's another Phoenix species, Phoenix roebelenii, which is not hardy, but it's small, so you could have that and harvest the fronds from that for the celebrants. That one is I think, is from Laos, I believe, but it's like a miniature date palm. It's kind of nice. The genus Rhapis are from South America. Chamaerops humilis, which is from the Mediterranean, is a shrubby species. And the genus Sabal, which includes the Sabal Palmetto, which is the National tree of South Carolina I believe. So there are a number of palms which will tolerate cold. For if you have a sunny place in your house, you can keep the palms, some of which are small, indoors in the coldest weather and then outdoors in the summertime. And the ones that have fronds which are the traditional palms for Palm Sunday, the ones that we've been talking about, would be the date palm. The other palms I've mentioned, one of the one from South America also has the feather-like leaf. But the others have fan-shaped leaves, beautiful trees and worth trying to grow if you don't get too cold. Now, South Texas doesn't get cold, very cold, except there once every 30 years including this this year, when all the palm trees that have been growing, will get damaged or even killed. Don't plant a lot of palm trees if you're in that cold area, but you can have some to add interest to the garden. And then if you're interested in this symbolism of Palm Sunday. In California where palms are constantly grown in so many places. I've often mentioned to people that own churches that they should plant date palms, because after all, it's mentioned in the scriptures and they're beautiful trees too. So, Rhapis palms.
Farmer Fred 06:38
Yeah, date palms, though, would be better for a Mediterranean climate, I would think.
Warren Roberts 06:42
Yes, they would. They're particularly well suited to lots of areas of California and Arizona. In fact, they're the date palm that other orchards have them for harvesting the dates.
Farmer Fred 06:57
But there's actually very few areas that they're able to get a crop.
Warren Roberts 07:02
Yes, that's true. It is it is possible.
Farmer Fred 07:05
Palms. Who would have thunk it? You can find them outside Stalin's dining room, you can find them all around the world and in some rather interesting climates. Warren Roberts is with the UC Davis Arboretum. If you want to visit them online, please do. You're going to find out a lot and then if you happen to visit Davis, California, you can certainly take a stroll through the UC Davis Arboretum. They're online at arboretum.uc davis.edu ,Warren, thanks for palming this off on us today.
Warren Roberts 07:35
You're very welcome. Thank you.
Farmer Fred 07:42
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Farmer Fred 08:41
We like to answer your garden questions here on Garden Basics. Debbie Flower is with us, our favorite retired college horticultural professor, is always inspiring us and we find out a lot. It's always the scenic bypasses that are very educational on this program. And today let's take a palm plant scenic bypass. Debbie. Palms actually, as we've learned, can be grown in a wide variety of climates. It seems like you can grow palms down to USDA zone six.
Debbie Flower 09:14
Wow, I don't think I knew that.
Farmer Fred 09:17
See? It's a scenic bypass where you learn stuff.
Debbie Flower 09:19
Yeah. I love teaching because I'm always learning from my students.
Farmer Fred 09:23
Right? Anyway, so Richard writes in and where does Richard live? He doesn't tell us. Folks, if you're going to send an email to Fred at farmerfred.com with picture,s tell us where you are. because that'll give us a better idea of how to more accurately answer your questions. And don't forget you can call with a question and you don't even have to call. You go to speakpipe.com slash gardenbasics and then just yell at your computer and we'll get your question.
Debbie Flower 09:51
So that's speakpipe dot com
Farmer Fred 09:57
slash garden basics. Yeah.
Farmer Fred 10:01
speakpipe.com slash garden basics. It's fun, it's easy. If you have a microphone on your computer or even on your phone. It's automatic.
Debbie Flower 10:11
And answering questions is so much fun.
Farmer Fred 10:13
Yes, it is. Anyway, so Richard, from who knows where, says" I have a palm and a pot that is growing upward into the air with the roots exposed, have had it for a couple of years, it's getting worse. It needs support to stand. And even that is becoming difficult. I want to keep it in a pot, but I need to repot it. I'm unsure if I should plant it or do nothing or repot with the roots lower in the potting soil, or something else. It's actually doing okay. Except it no longer stands on its own. Which is why in the picture, you see it leaning against a vertical structure. Do you have any ideas?" And Debbie, I know a lot of people get worried especially with palms, they see all this surface rooting going on. But that's right, that's normal.
Debbie Flower 10:58
That's normal. Yes, a palm is. And I'm going to get technical, surprise. A palm is a mono cut. It's a class of plants or a subclass, depending on whose categorizations you're looking at. Monocots include bamboo, grass, all the bulbs, and palms. And one thing they have in common is they have a different kind of root system. It's called an adventitious root system. I used to tell the students think of it as adventurous, not adventitious, because roots will arise wherever they can, out of the stem. There are certain zones that are on the stem that are more likely to produce roots. And in palms, that's the zone that's just above the soil, and the roots come out and if they hit the soil or some moisture, they will become feeder roots. But if they don't, they just sort of sit dormant and wait until their chance to get moist and become a feeder root. But there are roots underground, and palms produce huge root systems, which again, it's something I think we we forget about because palms can easily because they're monocot, and because they have the adventitious root system, they can easily be dug with a very small amount of roots on them, shipped long distances and replanted and they will be successful. Plants with an adventitious root system can lose their entire root system or almost all of it and regrow a whole set. And so I watched the installation of Palms in Folsom, where Fred lives, when they were putting in a big shopping center. And I happened to drive down that street when they were installing palms. They had, they must have been 30 or 40 foot palm trees on long trucks. And they were using a crane to lift them and plant them. But the amount of roots was next to very small on the bottom of these very tall palms, they had to stabilize them, while the palm was able to produce an entirely new root system. So the roots on palms are very different than the roots on oaks and citrus and fir trees. Oaks and citrus and fir trees are not monocots. So they have this ability to produce an extra set of roots. From the picture it looks to me like Richard's palm is in a container that's too small to allow it to produce the massive set of roots that it would normally have were it in the ground. And that's probably why it's unable to stand up. It's gotten big enough and heavy enough above ground that it just can't support itself anymore. So I would recommend that Richard, move it into a pot that's probably at least four inches diameter bigger across the top. That's a jump, that's a big jump, typically not recommended in horticulture, you usually want to go one to two inches wider in diameter when you move a plant from one pot size to the next pot size. But because Richard's plant is in such trouble, I think I would go even bigger, I would slice the root ball. When he takes the palm out of the current pot and knock off as much of the media that he can. I suspect that palm has been in that pot for years and that media has broken down and become very compacted and that is less than desirable for the roots of the plant. So being an adventitious root system. He can cut off a lot of roots and not harm the plant. If the plant will suffer. The plant will need some TLC right after you've plant it, after you cut off its roots, but it will not kill it. So knock off as much of the roots as possible. Maybe trim the bottom especially if the roots are circling. In the bottom of the pot, you can cut all those roots off, then put it in the new pot, but put it in at the same level it's growing. Now, if you were to bury those roots that are visible above ground, then the roots that were functioning below ground will be too deep, and that could kill the plant. So leave it with the normally occurring adventitious roots above ground, planted at the same level it was in the previous pot and put in you know, lots of media, firm it with water or by tapping the pot, picking it up and dropping it on the on the counter that helps compact the medium without over compacting the medium. And then probably it will need support, the stem will need support, until it has time to build a new root system. And I might give it a little bit of shade after transplanting. I think of them as babies after I've transplanted them. Give them a couple weeks, minimum of a month would be better in with extra care checking the water very regularly making sure it's it doesn't go to either extreme, too wet or too dry, giving them a little more shade than they would take otherwise, although that was not done in the parking lot where I saw them planting those giant palms. But just coddling them a little bit so that you then have a healthy plant faster.
Farmer Fred 16:22
I want to ask this question so I can watch your nostrils flare. So then it'd be a good idea to add vitamin B-1.
Debbie Flower 16:31
There have been studies on vitamin B1, I know it's touted as a wonder cure. And I've seen it on the shelves at reputable nurseries. I haven't heard anyone recommending it lately who I respect. Vitamin B1, it does nothing. It does not help plants at all. This study had people with a bottle of vitamin B1 comes in a little brown bottle and I think it has a dropper in it maybe. Or maybe they added the dropper, but people with brown bottles and it's a brown liquid. And they didn't know if they had vitamin b1 or if they had water. But it was a controlled experiment. It was done correctly, it was done scientifically. And the people went out and they were told to apply vitamin b1 to their plants every day or every other day or whatever the recommended time was. And when they did that all the plants flourished whether they had the vitamin b1, they didn't know which they had whether they had the vitamin b1 or the water. And it turns out or the speculation, or the results of the experiment were that whether you applied water or vitamin B1, the plants did equally as well. And it's probably because you visited the plant on a regular basis. That's the number one thing. So if you want to spend money and apply vitamin b1, you can throw your money away on that product. But the critical thing is that you visit that plant that you just did something to in this case, transplanted the palm and see what's going on. Did it fall over? Did something chew on it? That's not real common with palms. But does it have aphids, did the pot get knocked over by the wind last night, whatever it is, you're going to see it. Whereas if you don't visit the plant, you miss all those things, and the plant can be in trouble and you don't know it. If you want to use vitamin b1 and spend your money and do that Be my guest but it it's no better than just going out and visiting your plant on a regular basis.
Farmer Fred 18:35
Or tossing a Flintstone vitamin into the planting hole.
Debbie Flower 18:39
Well, now I have to know what's in a Flintstone.
Farmer Fred 18:44
probably sugar
Debbie Flower 18:46
probably sugar. Yes, the living organisms in the soil.
Farmer Fred 18:51
Now I'm not defending vitamin b1. But if you can actually find a bottle where they list the ingredients, I probably saw one once. IT WAS from a really old bottle.,
Farmer Fred 19:04
from like the 1950s or 1960s. And this was all predicated on an experiment done back in the 1930s using thiamin, which is b1, to grow wheat indoors and they saw success doing that. Well, that didn't replicate itself outdoors, nor did it replicate itself using other crops. But you know, somebody in the research department got a marketing idea and started selling this as this wonder drug, if you will, to get plants to adapt to a new environment easier. And it really doesn't. But on this label besides water and thiamin it listed auxins, and auxins do have some sort of root regeneration power, don't they?
Debbie Flower 19:56
Auxins only work from within the plant. So externally applied auxins only work if you have a wound in the plant. And so if you cut the roots, maybe that does have a benefit, I don't know any research that says that. But we use auxins when we are starting cuttings. Because we've cut the stem and or the leaf or whatever root, whatever kind of cutting we're making. And we have an open door to the vascular system of the plant, which can then absorb the auxin and the auxin is absorbed and does its thing, you have to have a wound and in transplanting do you typically do have a wound because it's very difficult to transplant a plant from one place to another without cutting some roots somewhere. But the auxin has to touch it, it has to be absorbed, to have any effect.
Farmer Fred 20:48
By the way, when we were saying auxin, we're not talking about taking a cattle with long horns and shoving it into a planting hole. The auxin we are speaking of is A-U-X-I-N, for all you Words with Friends people out there, it's a great word, auxins, which refer to what we're talking about here.
Debbie Flower 21:07
Right? It's a plant hormone, it's involved in cell elongation. In particular, it's a thing, if you're growing a plant by a window sill and it grows toward the window or on a window sill and it grows toward the window, then the auxin, it moves away from the sunny side of the plant to the other side of the stem and causes those cells on that side to get longer. And so that's the stem on the side away from the window gets longer and the plant leans toward the sun. And it's it's involved in cell processes. So yes, it's very important hormone for plants. But the amount you would get, because my recollection is you use drops of b1, right? Very, very little, the amount you use, when we're using auxins and cuttings, we're using a concentrated powder with a certain concentration of auxins. And that concentration needs to be just right for the stem that we're using. If it's too high, it'll actually prevent roots from growing. So that wouldn't be the problem with B1 if you're putting a drop in the soil. But I actually contacted that company once and asked them what was in, I guess it was super thrive. It was super thrive. Yes. And they gave a very vague answer. About good things that are good for plants are naturally occurring things that are good for plants.
Farmer Fred 22:39
One thing we should make clear, is that you mentioned monocots. Talk about the difference between a monocot and dicot.
Debbie Flower 22:47
Palms are monocots. And it's a class or subclass of plant depending on whose categorization of life you're looking at. And by categorization of life I mean, it's Kingdom, Division, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. It's how closely things are related to each other. As we go down from Kingdom we hit the class or in some cases it's subclass and and in
Farmer Fred 23:13
I thought from Kingdom you went to division.
Debbie Flower 23:15
Division, right? And then then class or subclass. And that's where you'll find the separation of plants into monocot and dicot. And monocots share a certain set of characteristics and dicots share a certain set of characteristics, which makes them and makes us handle them differently. That's why it's valuable to know in a horticulture situation, the diecots. The word "mono" means "one" and "di" means "two" and "cot" is actually a shortening of the word cotyledon. Cotyledon is the seed leaf. Cotyledon exists in the seed, in a seed as a complete plant, already formed. It has stem, roots, these cotyledons, or baby leaves and then folded up inside of them are the first true leaves. And the cotyledons contain the food that allow the seed to establish itself and grow long enough that it can make its own food. Plants make their own food from light and water and carbon dioxide.
Farmer Fred 24:19
So basically, when you're talking about the cotyledons, a monocot would be like a grass and one blade comes up. And that's a monocot. A dicot, anybody who's ever planted the seed of a vegetable will note that the first things that sprout are two leaves, to sort of semi-oval leafs.
Debbie Flower 24:38
It won't be the shape of of the leaves that we're going to see after that. Probably not. And monocots have parallel venation, so corn is one vegetable that is a monocot and when you look at a stem, hold it up to the light, hold it up to the sun and you'll see basically the veins in it are parallel. Same with a palm. Although the palm leaves are often split into sections that have parallel veins, the spider plant is a monocot, Iris is a monocot, look at the iris leaf in the sun, look at grass leaves in the sun and you will see these parallel veins eventually they touch at the very tip because the tip gets really small. And so those parallel veins do touch but the primary veins in those leaves are parallel so they just run next to each other. You can see venation if you take celery. Celery's a monocot. Put some food coloring, maybe blue, maybe red, in a cup of water. Stick in a stalk of celery and the veins will become whatever color you put in the cup. And that shows you where the veins are. Do the same thing with, I don't know if you could do it with carrot leaves, and see it. I never tried that. Get a sprig of mint take some leaves off of some plant you have outside. If you're what would you be growing now? Chard. Take some chard and stick it in leaves. It's easier when the Leafs colors a little bit lighter but you will see the veins actually celery is not a monocot. I take that back. If you do celery do a piece with a leaf on it. You'll see the veins in stock of the celery that's the stem or this stem of the leaf and then the leaf veins will be netted. Dicots have netted venation. "Netted" meaning they cross each other. My dad was an usher in a church for many Sundays. And in this church the ushers were given a white carnation to wear. And my biggest thrill was to come home and put that white carnation in a glass of colored water and then watch the carnation change color but only in the veins. Flower petals are modified leaves. So you'll get the same pattern of venation in the petals of a flower as you will in the leaf of the same plant.
Farmer Fred 26:12
I'm sure a lot of people right now are asking themselves when you have described the celery experiment of putting red dye in water and putting celery in there and watching the stem turn red. Is that edible?
Debbie Flower 27:25
Sure. If it's food coloring, yes. Okay. All right. As long as it's food coloring, yes.
Farmer Fred 27:31
So you you could serve basically striped celery at a meal?
Debbie Flower 27:36
Yes, you could.
Debbie Flower 27:42
Chard. Striped chard, although chard already scomes in some beautiful colors.
Farmer Fred 27:46
Exactly. I'm wondering if that's how they got that way? I don't think so. Because I've planted chard from seed and it comes up especially the bright lights variety as those beautiful red and yellows, stems, main stems. So that probably not. Well, we've learned a lot again from Debbie Flower, our favorite retired college horticultural Professor. Debbie, thanks for your efforts in this behalf.
Debbie Flower 28:13
Oh, it's a pleasure, Fred. Thank you.
Farmer Fred 28:17
Thanks for listening to Garden Basics with Farmer Fred, brought to you by Smart Pots. Garden Basics comes out every Tuesday and Friday. It's available on many podcast platforms including Apple, Spotify, Google, IHeart, Stitcher and many more. And if you're listening on Apple, please leave a comment or a rating. That helps us decide which garden topics you'd like to see addressed. And again, thank you.
