When we moved from the large property in Vermont to the postage stamp in Florida, I thought my yard maintenance days were over. Our yard here is so small, we just let the crew do it that does the rest of the neighborhood rather than buying and maintaining the equipment.
Well, after doing some research on the beautiful palm trees here, I found out that they need occasional pruning.
This is supposedly some type of Date Palm. Apparently many types of these are edible and quite tasty. This tree has a lot of fruit already, not yet ripe.
Here you can see how some of the lower leaves turning yellow.
I initially thought not too big a deal to trim a "few leaves", but was surprised at what it turned into.
These little ones were not too bad, easy clipping with a pair of pruning shears. This is the before pic.
And here is the after pic. Just a little cleaner and keeping them out of the pool. An easy 2 trip carry of the cut branches to the pickup pile.
Then I went to the big trees. Those were not so easy! I had to use a big stepladder and this Electric EGO pole saw, basically a small chainsaw on a pole.
It did a great job cutting them after I sharpened the chain.
Definitely needed some thick leather gloves. The base of these leaves have giant thorns growing from them over 2 inches long! Very sharp.
I had to trim the very large tree in the first picture, then another clump of 4 trees. It was much more than I expected with somewhere around 75-125 branches cut. I lost count carrying them to the pile. Many of these were taller than I am and I could only drag about 4-5 of these at a time over the pile. Betty standing next to the pile looks small and she is 115 lbs!
Here you can see the base of some of these are as thick as your arm, and took some cutting, much like soft pine tree branches.
Here are the final results after a couple hours effort and a lot of sweat! My shirt was dripping wet, and not even over 80 degrees yet today. Glad I went out early morning.
The "After" pic from the first shot.
This is the other group of 4-5 bundled together.
General rule of thumb is to trim them to 10-2 position or 11-1 position. This allows the tree to stop sending all the nutrients to those huge lower branches and instead feed them to the top for new growth.
I've also followed up with some special Palm tree feeding regimen that provides three different type of nutrients over a 4-6 week period. That should hopefully get them all nice and healthy.
Next time though, I think I'll leave it to the Pro's lol.
Love seeing those tropical palm trees. Do you have to watch out for biting insects/spiders and snakes when you do hands on garden work?
I was expecting the mosquitos to be really bad down here, but actually MUCH less than we had up north. And haven't had the flies either. There are definitely spiders here and other insects for sure, but not really bad around the house. We do have a 3 ft Blacksnake in the yard, but those are ok although it freaks my wife out, lol. There are a few types of poisonous snakes to watch for, rattlesnakes, water moccasins, coral snakes, but those mostly out in the wild areas, not so much around the subdivision. There are also some scorpions, but mostly small and not very poisonous to human ones. I haven't been able to find any yet, even got a new UV flashlight to see if I can find them glowing at night, lol.
Sounds almost like paradise then// 🤣
Yard work and you thought that was in the past. Your place looks beautiful. You've got to love the pool and if it's heated you'll be able to swim all year even when us in the north east are freezing our butts off.
Have a splendid weekend my friend.
Yes we are VERY much enjoying all the nice weather and the pool. We did have to fix the pool heater, but it was very nice to warm it up a bit. I know the ugly hot weather coming next month, but that only lasts a short 2 months compared to the many months of winter up north. So far has been a great change for us. I am definitely a shorts and flip flop guy vs all the multi-layer, socks, boots, coat, and mask kind of guy. I haven't put on a pair of socks in almost 2 months!
Oh wow, that is a pretty big pile. I was thinking it was a smaller dog based on the photo. Definitely not a 110 pound bear! I saw something the other day where they were talking about the fact that most palm trees are trimmed back to the traditional top heavy style you normally see. It might have been your post with the alligator now that I think of it. Take it easy the rest of the week, you earned it!
Yes, it's hard to tell that it's Bear Betty from the angle of the pic. lol I never really noticed the tree trimming before I went to research it, but now it's quite easy to tell which ones in the neighborhood have been done and which have not. It seems the bottom ones turn yellow, brown, and then eventually fall off themselves, but they do get a bit unsightly. It seems healthier for the trees to prune them up this time of year which also helps reduce the stress on them during the upcoming storm season.
That makes a lot of sense!