Palmpost

Embracing Our Interdependence With Nature

Palmpost

My property is full of resources for my gardening. Yours may be too. It has always been important to me to find the things that the earth provides for us. Palmpost is one of those excellent provisions.
Palmpost is the insides of a palm log or palm tree once it breaks down or composts.

Over the years I have often stopped my car or truck when I saw logs on the side of the road left for the waste pickups and loaded them up to take home to my garden. All along my pathways in the woods I put upright logs as pedestals for my potted plants. Palm logs don’t last very long. After a year or so of sitting on the damp ground in the woods and taking on water from the potted plant sitting on top of it, the insides of the palm log begins to soften. When I begin to see the live oaks coming up through the log and around the pot, when the pot begins to sink into the log I move the potted plant and harvest the palmpost.

Harvesting is easy, just peel off some of the shell on the outside of the palm log, and scoop out the palmpost. You may have to pull some roots out of it, but that is pretty easy. Of course it depends on the size of the log, but I usually get a little more than a 3 gallon pot full of fluffy palmpost.

Palmpost is fluffy and brown. It reminds me of peat moss only no bog habitat was destroyed to obtain it. I have been mixing palmpost into my potting mix to lighten it up for cuttings and seedlings.
It works great.

Happy Gardening

 

3 Responses

  1. It is amazing at how many resources we have on our land without being aware of it. It awews me every time my wife shows me something like this.
    Grow your own food!

  2. Christine Crawford says:

    Yeah, my back and station wagon have felt the strain of hauling these babies home.Sabals, Washintonias, Queens… My neighbor just rescued some and made a tiki. She can just let it palmpost when the tiki gets tired.

    I think the native sabal is such a beautiful specimen, in its living state preferably but sometimes they do have to go. If I had the means to get uncut logs home I would love to have them to use as edging for raised veg beds. My 80+ sabals in my yard can breathe easy ’cause no chainsaw will touch them as long as I am around. The dead uncut ones make great bird condos. I have had ducks, woodpeckers, and screech owls use them as a nesting spot…

    There is some disease causing them to die in some places. Here is a link about it: http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2008/jul/15/mysterious-disease-killing-sabal-palm-state-tree/
    I hope it kills all of the Queen Palms and leaves our native, state tree alone.

  3. admin says:

    Thanks for your comments Daniel and Christine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.