Potting Up Cold Hardy Palm Seedlings

I think that looks good. What do you think? Is that too much? That's fine. Hey, what's up, gardener friends? Jeff here. How's everybody doing? Hope you're doing well. I'm great. Mosquitoes are really bad tonight. Gonna have the fan blowing on me. Sorry. It creates background noise, but it's unbearable without it. Turbo, you gonna swim? Go do your thing. Go swim. Or just stare at me. That's fine too. I have a pile of palms over here that all need to be potted up pretty badly. Look at these. Look at that. They're waiting for a new pot. I said wetty, because I was starting to say waiting and ready at this. I'm sorry. Off to a great start. These are Sable Diffuniac, or Diffuniac Springs. It's a palmetto, probably a palmetto minor cross, is what they're thinking, but they don't know for sure. By they, I mean the palm people, the professional palm people. Perhaps has some atonia in it. Thinking is that this is a trunked palm, like palmetto, crosses one of the palms that has a subterranean trunk, which would be Sable Minor or Sable Atonia. Look at that. I need to bring them all over here at one time. So these guys right here, potting them up. I was thinking it was gonna be tricky, but I'm gonna keep them in a smaller container. My stalker. Gotta love dogs. I don't have a ton to say about these. I've talked about these quite a bit. So there's a video with the Sable Palms. This is a Sable Palm haul. These were part of it. And I just feel like I've talked about this particular palm a lot. So I'll reference you back to that palm, and I'm sure I'll go over a lot of the info on these again. Whenever I start with small palms from seedlings, these are actually huge for a seedling, but you know what I mean. Whenever I start them off into a new container, I usually film it. It's usually short, and that way we can refer back to it every single year. Just, it's fun. You know, as gardeners, part of the appeal is watching things grow, right? So that's why we're here. It's just, you know, it's for the record. Way to sell yourself. Everybody know that you're worthy of watching. You're saying, I'm just making this video for the record. This is just for me to reflect back on in a couple of years. Not really. I mean, there's plenty to say about these palms. One, look at this. Look at that. That's ridiculous. Oh, these are from Plant Delights, by the way. Plant Delights Nursery, great place to get your sable palms from. They have a wide variety. And Sable King, I think it's Sable King, Texas. They're on Etsy. I think maybe he sells on Facebook too. He has an amazing selection of sable palms. So you can see, I'm not doing a huge upgrade container-wise with these, only because it's later in the year, September when this video comes out. It's basically September right now. Late August. These aren't going to be doing a ton as far as root growth. So I mostly just want to get them into something that's going to be more manageable as far as we want to keep them watered this winter. So that's why I went with these containers. These are basically cymbidium pots. It's a six inch by eight inch container. It's a unique size. Not that easy to find or get ahold of. I do have six of them, and I think that that'll be just fine just to get them through the winter. And then the spring, I'll probably just bump these strips to a 10 inch pot. This is going to be a nightmare to get out. I think the best thing to do is to just cut, right? So take the box cutter and try and just extend these cuts out as far as I can. Something with the sable palms to keep in mind is that when you break a piece of the root, the rest of that entire root dies. So just be fairly careful at how I do this, which is going to be challenging to be careful when this is what I'm dealing with in the bottom of the pot. Okay, spent probably a good 10 minutes on that. Maybe it will come out now. Trying to be really careful and not mess with these roots. Don't want to break them. If there's some die off, that's not the end of the world. Especially because, you know, we can see that it has this going on right here. So it has a big growth to regenerate roots off of, but it just is not ideal. Oh, that's really tangled up in there. Pull it right there. There we go. All right. It's fairly moist. I'm not going to do a lot to try and loosen the root memory here. Just a little bit. Like I said, I don't want to break anything, but I do want to get some of that old soil out. The Plant Delights. I love them, but the mix that they use that I'm sure is just amazing for how they're growing things in their greenhouses with their more warmer, more mild climate. It just doesn't work for me. It dries out way, way, way too fast. Not for summertime care, but it's actually in the winter, which is when we want these plants to be more on the dry side. I still find myself having to water a lot, which is just not ideal during the winter times. I just need something in here and around these roots that can hold on to some more moisture. As long as you just, you see some texture there on the sides, then you're good. I'm going to have to mess with that a little bit though. That'll be fine. So the bark mix, not the bark mix, sorry. I was just unboxing Aeroids. The soil mix that I'm using here is basically just Pro-Mix that I have added a handful of compost into. That's nothing fancy. The compost is just going to be in there. I don't know why I did that. I had to put the plant in there first. Just need to get that in the tray. The compost is just to help with some moisture retention. It's the only reason I have the compost in there. The Pro-Mix dries very fast, which is not a bad thing. I'm happy that it dries fast, but I think just a little bit too quickly. Something I'm interested to find out about with this palm, with it being more than likely a cross between a miner and a palmetto, is how much moisture it's going to enjoy. Because the sable miners, they can take an awful lot of moisture. I was hoping this would go down deeper than that, but I think that that's okay. That should be fine, yeah. The, right, the palmettos, they can go either way, but palmettos, you have to keep in mind that if you have a lot of moisture and it's cold, they're going to die. It's not great for miners either, but the sable miners are more likely to be able to take it. Sable miners, most of them are hardy into zone six. We'll say zone seven without protection. Zone six, you may need to protect them sometimes. And that's just like your standard sable miner. You know, there are variants and things like that that people say are good into zone five, like the mcCurtain. Just wondering if this is going to pick up those genes where they really like that moisture and thrive in it, because that would be pretty awesome to have a plant that's more tolerant of the moisture. That's one of the downsides to trying to grow palmetto here, where I am 6B, 7A, St. Louis, is that it's just moisture in the wintertime is really tricky with them. Mostly just accumulating here. You want to keep the middle really dry, so you need to wrap them really, really tight. And obviously keep their trunks dry and everything. But still, it's difficult. The miners, they're fine. Sable miner, you don't have to do anything with them. They just grow, and they stay happy all the time. These are really nice plants, by the way. Really, really, really nice, big plants. Typically, whenever I order a palmetto, whether it's, well, I'm sorry, palmetto, but a trunked sable palm. So it's Mexicana, Bersoriensis, Black Beriana. It's just a few strapleys for like 30 bucks. These are really, really good-sized plants. If you have a chance to order these, I highly suggest it. This is late summer 2026. I don't know when you're watching this, but if you're watching this in the future, I don't know what that crop's gonna look like. But the crop from this year, the 2026 crop, these are flawless, gorgeous plants. These were $28 a piece, which is interesting because I also, I have another order that I got in three weeks prior to these. I ordered two. I really like them, so I ordered four more, and they're $24. It's not that interesting, just a slight price change. Maybe the other ones were on sale. Actually, I think they were on sale. Here's the other one. There's three more down there, but they don't have the, I guess we'll call that the subterranean trunk. That's what that is. This is, you know, the plant's forming a big, big, healthy underground stem that's going to grow off of in the future. Not a taproot, but, you know, kind of a similar vibe, I suppose. That's an interesting thing, too. So that's not something I usually see with my palmetto-type seedlings, which, you know, these are big, but I'm still gonna call it a seedling. They don't usually put out that stump until they're quite large, like usually when they're in, like, I don't know, about a three-gallon pot, maybe even a five-gallon container. Then I might start to see some of that going on. Sorry, he bumped the camera. I don't usually see it when they're this small, which, you know, that also kind of points to maybe having that sable miner and its genetics, the sable miner. I think I talked about it, but they have an underground trunk. They don't really grow an above-ground trunk. Some do. It just depends on where you live. There's variants, and with lots and lots and lots and lots of age, many, many, many, many years, sometimes they will sport an above-ground trunk, but it's not much. It's not significant. It's the same if you plant a sable miner. One of those dwarf palmettos, make sure you really like where you're putting it, because after they've been in the ground for a few years, transplanting them can be very tricky because they have all that underground growth with them. So yeah, I just thought that was interesting. You know, that might point to some of the sable miner genetics, having that much of a subterranean trunk at such a small size. Maybe not. It is amazing the roots that palm seedlings can put down. Have you ever tried to dig up a palm seedling before? It's usually pretty tricky because they put down some insane, strong anchoring roots. They'll look like there's nothing to the plant, just a few strap leaves, and you try to pull that thing up, probably not happening. It's not coming up with its roots anyways. You might just get a whole bunch of broken pieces. This one right here, this is much easier. Didn't have a big chunk of trunk growing out the bottom of the pot. Palm trees, like a nice deep container. It's one of the reasons I like these cymbidium pots. The grow bags work really well too. I prefer to not use those just because they're always getting knocked over and that can be annoying. So these are more rigid, sturdy, reusable. These last a pretty long time too, the cymbidium pots, the big, tall, wicked pots. And like I said, these aren't gonna be in here for too terribly long. I'd say in the springtime, really, I'll probably just pop these out and move these right up into a bigger pot. All right, here we go. I don't know how I lost a tag somewhere while I was doing this, but shouldn't be too hard to remember. The ones that are in these green cymbidium pots are the ones that are the Diffuniac Springs. Look at them. Aren't those really nice looking plants? There's one tag that was on the ground. I don't know where the other one went. It's probably in here somewhere. I don't know, worry about that later. I keep these and then, well, it's gonna be a heated greenhouse. It's a cold frame. Keep heaters in there, try and keep it above 50 during the wintertime. These can go cooler than that. That just goes back to that moisture thing like I was talking about. If it's cool or cold, better that they're dry, right? Yet I was repotting them into a mix that holds more moisture. It's just the way we have to do things. Sometimes things are backwards, but it's overall better for the plants that they're in a mix that's going to hold on to some more moisture just so that I don't have to water them as frequently. This isn't gonna hold on to much though. This is a very, very, very sharp draining mix right here. It's just gonna hold on a little bit better than the bark chips that they're in when they're shipped over. This helps prevent desiccation. Because that is a problem. These are gonna be in a greenhouse where it's an electric heater. That air gets pretty darn dry in there. So that extra moisture is gonna help a lot. And these are gonna go into bigger pots. I know I keep saying that. Only because, well, I showed you the one in the beginning that was in a big pot, right? That's one of these. I just said screw it and I put it in a big pot. So I was like, well, I'll roll the dice with one, but the rest of them, I should stick with what I know I'm supposed to do and bump them up slowly until, really until they fill these out. And that's when I can go ahead and start doing bigger upgrades with them. With palm seedlings, I like to step them up very, very slowly until, well, it depends on the palm, right? With the sable palms, really once they start to have that subterranean trunk going on them, then I'll put them into a nice big pot. But it's just not the right time for that. Anything watered in this would probably hold on to too much moisture during the wintertime. So yeah, that's what's going on with those. The sable, palmetto, diphoniax springs. I highly suggest them if you want a palm that is said to be very cold hardy and probably pretty fast growing. Actually, I think the quick growth is more of the for sure and the probably is more of the cold hardiness, right? Hopefully pretty cold hardy. That seems to be more cold hardy than just the regular palmetto. Grows quickly. The ones that plant twice, they said there's flowered for them in as little as five years. Put out anthracnose that quickly. So that's pretty promising for speed of growth. Makes me much more into the idea of experimenting with a cold hardy palm when they have that quick growth. If it grows very slowly, like the sable minor mcCurtain, that grows too slow for me. Same thing with the sable Birmingham. Too slow. I had sable Birmingham, then we had a bad winter, completely defoliated, and then I got like two, or I think I got three fronds out of it that year. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We can't be doing that. They need vigor so they can push out old growth if it's gotten any type of rot or anything in the crown, it's good to have a plant that's more vigorous because we regularly have really bad winters. So if I were to try this during the winter time, I at least know that it's one that's going to grow a little bit more quickly, which means it just has better odds of pushing through any damage that it gets from the cold. Yep, that's all. Hope you enjoyed it. I like talking about the cold hardy palms and I just like palm seedlings too. I think they're kind of cute. They're fun to have around. Fun to watch grow. There'll be updates on this one for sure next spring. We'll do a video repotting these probably, bump them up towards your container. Yeah, comment down below. Say hi, what's going on in your gardens? Favorite cold hardies and things you've been trying once you have good sources for getting different types of sable palms? Let us know. All right, hope everyone's doing well. Have a great day, great life. Things are going absolutely beautiful for you. And of course, as always, and most importantly, everybody, gosh, I am getting eaten alive. Keep on growing. Keep on growing, bye.