Growing King Palm as a Houseplant

Time for some reflection. Been doing a fun thing where I'm going around looking at my palms, thinking about them. Just a nice, I was going to say cold day in January. It's actually 60 degrees outside. It's freakishly warm right now for January. I did a video talking about my pikaia palms and then remembered, you know what else I also tried and haven't given any updates on yet? Is this king palm over here. So I thought, let's pull this out, take it over to the desk where I can have a better look at it. See how this guy's been doing. Ten months ago, I got this guy. Well, no, ten months ago, I released the video on this plant. A video that would have been filmed, I believe, September or August of 2024. Yeah, that was a while ago. And then for some reason, it took me nearly a year to get that video to come out. I think it's because I wanted to grow this out for a while before releasing the video in case I had anything I needed to add to it, which I didn't. And here we are, 11, almost 12 months later, depending on when this video comes out. Maybe 10 months. I don't know. I'm going to let this video come out, but we can have a look at it. Got a nice piece of old leaf base there, frond base. Open that up. See some little trunkage going on there. That's always exciting. This container got smushed. Tempted to repot that, but I don't think I will. I don't have a ton to say other than I stand by what I said in that video, which was that I don't understand why these aren't sold more commonly. I see them in California, obviously. They're all over the place in California. But if you don't live in California, these are very difficult to get a hold of. They need to be gaining popularity in Florida. I do know people grow them in Florida, but it would be nice if they would be more popular down there, if more popular down there than the growers would be growing them more. And they might send some of them up north for those of us who want to try them as houseplants. Anything I can find that's an alternative to the edinidias that get shipped up here, I will take. And I love a king palm. I love them. They have beautiful, beautiful, graceful foliage, really nice trunks on them. They move very nicely in the wind and they're pretty dang sturdy plants. Let's have a look here. What have these roots done? Quite a bit. Got some fungusy stuff going on in there. That's fine. Got a nice little habitat of something. I don't know what that is. It almost looks like styrofoam. I don't think I had any packing peanuts in this mix. Sometimes if I have packing peanuts around, I'll break them up and add them into a potting mix. I don't have perlite, but I don't recall doing that with this one. But I don't know, maybe one of them snuck in there. This is going to be ready for a repot this spring. I'd say it's definitely going to be ready to go into a larger container. Not much of a bump up. This is a 10 inch container. So I'll probably bump that up into a probably a five or seven gallon pot this spring. I don't think this would be the appropriate time of year to do that. The winter care for this, what I've been doing has been pretty hands off. I just water it when I water other things. And it's been fine with that. There have been plenty of occasions where it did dry out all the way. And I was like, yeah, it looks like you could use some water. And I would water it. And it's been good with that. The only disappointment I have with this plant is that it it's growing slow. It's been really slow to take off. But I suppose if I look back to when I got this, it's put on a couple of feet. But I'm just I'm wanting a lot more to happen in here and that crown shaft. But you've got to be patient. You know, the adenidias, there is a reason that they get sent up here and people do them as a houseplant. That's because, well, they can they can grow up faster, right? They're quite growers. They thicken up nice and fast. I was hoping the king palms would be the same. And there are different king palms. I think that this is a myelinensis. I'm pretty sure that that's what it was. I can't remember for sure. I'd have to look back at that video, which is one that gets a really thick trunk on it. Probably not the most ideal one to try indoors. If I were to just go with the Alexander type, even maybe the Cunningham. Really, the Alexander type, they stay more slender. And I'm going to get trunker fast. Trunker going to get trunking more quickly on one that stays more slenter. That myelinensis that's going to want to really thicken out more than likely before it starts moving upward. You know what I mean? But that can all vary. This is being grown in a semi indoor situation. It's indoors part of the year, outdoors the rest of the year. One of the things that I got really excited about with these. I'm going to disappoint you guys right here. I'm going to go get a scoop of fertilizer while I talk. One of the things that I have been enjoying about this palm is that it can take more cold than some of the other palms. I'm not letting it take frost too heavily, but I've been allowing it to take some frost. And it's not even the frost aspect of it. It's that there are the more common palms, Adenidius, Foxtails, Eureka palms, really just a lot of palms that like it really warm. These guys, one of the reasons they do so great in Southern California, right? Is that they just don't really seem to care all that much when we get to a time of the year and our temperatures are much cooler. They just maintain what they're doing, right? Move that and it's business as usual with them. I'm adding some fertilizer in here. It's been a minute. I should probably have some more. That's not quite enough. That's nice. So with the majority of the other palms that I grow outside of things like my mule palms, my pindo palms, just my typical tropical type palms is really what I'm referring to here. With those, when temperatures are consistently below like 70, they just sit still. They don't do much of anything. Where's this one? It was like, OK, I'm still going to grow. Not quickly, but still going to grow. There we go. Got a little bit of fertilizer in there. That should be good for it. Hasn't had much of a crown. It's a younger plant. That's not surprising. Generally just been holding on from anywhere from about three to five fronds at a time. And I think that's pretty normal with these guys when they're on the smaller side. This is probably just over four feet tall at this point. You can see how the roots are coming up in here. So it would be good. I know I need to wait until spring to repot it. I'm not liking the composition of the soil, though. It's broken down. It's becoming more mucky and muddy. It's something I noticed that it's working that slow release in there. So I don't know. I'm going to give it a few more weeks. I don't think the plant is any kind of danger. Just have to make sure to not let it sit in water. And then that really shouldn't be too much of an issue. But I don't like how much it's lifted up out of the soil. I'd like for that to not be up and exposed. Right. I can pack moss around it if need be. But I just don't want those roots to be up and exposed for too long because they start to get woody and then it can be more difficult to put soil over them, depending on your climate, your condition. Some palms don't care. You can cover those roots right up. King palm might be one of those. I don't know because this is this is my first go with the king palm. I have now had the plant for two years and like that. We talked about 10 months ago and it's been great. It's been a very hassle free palm. I have not had any pest problems with it, unlike those adenidias and the Eureka's and the other smooth trunked palms that are sold up where I live as houseplants very often. This one doesn't care. It's not fuss about the humidity either. Has not been fussy at all. That is so, so, so nice that it's just like, hey, I can grow whether it's more on the cool side, say, you know, between 45 and 65. And if it's going to be 100 degrees outside, that's fine, too. And it doesn't care. I have a feeling, a hopeful feeling that when I repot this, it's going to give me a nice boof, a big, big surge of growth. That might just be wishful thinking. I don't know. But I mean, it really it has grown. I think my expectations were just too high. I was thinking like, oh, it's a king palm. You know, they're all over the place in Southern California. They must grow really, really, really fast. And well, I don't live in Southern California, so maybe that's why it's not growing fast. You know what? I didn't check with this on the bottom. Is there a hole in the middle here? OK, good. So typically when you see the holes that are on the side like that, I get paranoid because sometimes there's no hole in the bottom of the pot. As I say, I am very impressed with this palm tree. If there was no hole down there, because that means that it's probably had a good amount of sitting water these last couple of winters when it's been inside and it didn't care. But that's not the case. There's a hole in the bottom. So I didn't I didn't need to say any of that. I'm sorry. Yeah. So going on two years with this palm tree, by the time this video comes out anyways, it's had one repot in that time. And really, I just took it from a 10 inch to another 10 inch that wasn't falling apart. The first pot I had was starting to fall apart. But I got some fresh soil when I did that. And I'd say it's ready after two years to go up to a larger container. Finally, and I haven't been the best about fertilizing it. I do that perfect palm fertilizer about twice a year, which really should be fine. But the liquids is really where I just haven't done a lot with it. It just kind of gets hit with an all purpose on the rare occasion I use an all purpose. I try and use a good amount of just organics and continuous releasing. So I don't need to use the liquids. But I'm like an all in or all out person when it comes to liquid fertilizers. I either am doing it and I'm very consistent. But if I know when I can build consistent with it, I don't usually bother unless I see some kind of deficiency that needs correction. Hasn't been an issue. No spider mites, no mealybugs. And I have spider mites and mealybugs galore out here. But this guy, it really hasn't been a problem. Actually, as far as the palms are concerned out here, I talked about this in the Pacaya Palm video. It's really mostly just the coconuts that get the spider mites on them. Then the Eureka Palm gets spider mite and mealybug. But the rest of the palms, it's not too much of an issue. So I wonder if that's more of a this side of the garage versus that side of the garage, more so than just the type of palms. I don't know. I have had to treat the Montgomery's for spider mites, though. So not necessarily. Not necessarily to this side versus that, I think. Anyways, yeah, they've been great. Are you growing them? I think that this is a good candidate for a houseplant, which is what I talked about in the original video. And why I decided that I wanted to grow these was because well, I like to try out different palms and see how they do indoors and just in a climate that's outside of where they're being grown, because that can influence things like maybe doing bulk seed orders and things like that and trying to get some of them moving. So you can sell them off to grow them as houseplants. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to do some things. I also I'm going to try and find just a regular Alexander type thing going with the more rare myelinensis type was probably unnecessary. So I'd like to be able to compare just your classic archontrophenics to something that's, you know, the fancy kind with the big fat crown shaft on it. The myelinensis really cool looking palms, really neat looking. But just your regular is nice, too. And that's why I should have been going for it. But they're just not that easy to find. I had to get this one off of Etsy and it was pretty frickin pricey for what it was. Now, when I was in Southern California, I found some at the nurseries and they were like, you know, 40 bucks for ones that were a little bit bigger than this. But well, this this was way more than 40 dollars. I'm not going to say how much it was, but it was very expensive, ridiculously expensive, and that's why I do these videos because I like to be able to report back and say, hey, it's been two years. This thing has been pretty much fuss free. Maybe not the fastest grower, but I think a great candidate to try as a house plant. Maybe other people will give them a try. We can increase some popularity on them and get growers to produce them more and bring down the price because the price, if you're mail ordering, these is absolutely frickin ridiculous. I can't talk that much about transplanting that can influence the market an awful lot. I have only moved it from being shipped into a container. Then several months later, about a year later, I had to bump it into another container that was identical size. I had bumped it up into a bigger container and I haven't really had to break any roots yet. So we'll see. All right. Whatever you have to add at it, it's a community. It's how we all learn and grow together. I know a lot of you who are watching do live in Southern California, so you probably have a lot to add to the conversation as far as growing them outdoors. And I'm hoping to keep gaining experience so I can give you some more information on growing them indoors. All right. As always, and most importantly, everybody, keep on growing. Bye.