Palm Trimming in Ocala, FL

Brown fronds hanging down the trunk. Seed pods dropping on the pool deck by the bucket. Boots loose and full of rats. Palms need trimming once or twice a year here, and there's a right way and a way that slowly kills them.

The right way

We take off the dead and dying fronds — the brown ones and the ones that have gone yellow past saving — plus the flower stalks and seed pods before they drop, and any loose boots on the trunk. Then we stop. The green crown stays, all of it. A palm makes its food in those fronds; every green one you cut is growth it doesn't get back.

The cut everybody has seen, where a sabal palm is stripped to a few upright fronds like a shaving brush, is called a hurricane cut and it's the opposite of what it claims. It starves the palm, narrows the trunk at the top, and leaves it more likely to snap in a storm, not less. We don't do it, and if you've been told it's what the palm needs, call and we'll show you the difference.

When

Late spring, before the seed pods form and before hurricane season, is the main trim. A lighter pass in fall catches what dropped over the summer. Palms don't need more than that, and the ones that get trimmed every six weeks by the "landscaper" are the ones that end up with pencil-thin tops.

Removal

Palms die too — lethal bronzing and ganoderma butt rot both take sabals in Marion County — and a dead palm is a heavy pole that doesn't give warning before it comes down. If the crown is gone or the trunk is soft at the base, that's a removal, and we'll tell you so.