Northern Tropicals

Northern Tropicals Northern Tropicals is the leading supplier of cold hardy tropical plants and palms in the Midwest. Enjoy breathtaking tropicalesque scenery in your backyard!

A lot of people wait until the first hard freeze hits, then run outside and water everything, thinking they are helping....
09/13/2026

A lot of people wait until the first hard freeze hits, then run outside and water everything, thinking they are helping. By then it is too late. Water poured onto already frozen ground just sits on top and turns to ice.

The window that actually matters is a day or two before the freeze arrives, while the soil can still take it in. After that, you are just decorating the yard with ice cubes.

09/11/2026

Back in 2020 I noticed my bananas and cannas would just sit there for weeks after planting, even on warm days, doing nothing. Turned out the soil was still cold from spring and that was the actual bottleneck, not the air.

I ran a heat cable around the root zone as a test and watched the leaves visibly unroll faster within a day. It borrowed me an extra month on both ends of the season, and right now, in September, is exactly when that borrowed time is paying off.

My Sabal palmetto has been running full bore at 75 degrees at the roots since spring, and it is staying there through ea...
09/09/2026

My Sabal palmetto has been running full bore at 75 degrees at the roots since spring, and it is staying there through early October. Then the cable starts a slow taper down to 50 by November, right as the box goes on for its very first winter.

The taper is the whole point. These palms do not harden off on their own like a windmill does, so the cable has to do that work for them before the cold really arrives.

Most people think a well-built winter box is the whole job. It isn't. Roots sitting at 35 to 36 degrees can't pull in wa...
09/08/2026

Most people think a well-built winter box is the whole job. It isn't. Roots sitting at 35 to 36 degrees can't pull in water even when the ground around them is technically moist, so a plant can quietly dehydrate inside a perfectly insulated box.

That's why I still crack the box open every couple weeks all winter and add a gallon of water straight to the roots. Cold doesn't kill it. Thirst does.

09/06/2026

Wrap it tight, throw a tarp over it, done by the weekend. That advice works fine in zone 7, where cold snaps are short and the ground barely freezes.

In zone 6 and colder it fails. Sustained cold gets through a tight wrap eventually. My box stays on from November to April, air gap and all, because my winter doesn't end in a weekend.

I don't box up my windmill palm because a frost is coming. Frost happens every fall and the palm shrugs it off completel...
09/04/2026

I don't box up my windmill palm because a frost is coming. Frost happens every fall and the palm shrugs it off completely fine on its own.

I box it when the forecast models start showing highs that stay below freezing, or by Thanksgiving weekend no matter what. That's the trigger. Not the thermometer, the pattern.

Winter 2018, outside hit sixteen below. My primary heaters ran so hard the oxygen sensors tripped and shut them down. No...
09/02/2026

Winter 2018, outside hit sixteen below. My primary heaters ran so hard the oxygen sensors tripped and shut them down. No backup yet. The greenhouse fell to sixteen degrees overnight.

I lost almost everything. Two plants made it: a manihot that had already survived four winters, and a hibiscus that came back from its own roots in spring. That night is the reason I run a diesel backup now, no matter what it costs.

08/31/2026

My banana bed still looks tropical, but I'm already watching the ten-day forecast. Once nights start flirting with the high 30s, it's time to dig, cut the leaves, and move Orinoco to the basement and Thai Black to the greenhouse.

Waiting for a frost warning is waiting too long. The corm doesn't care that the calendar says summer. More on how I store both varieties at northerntropicals.com.

Most jelly palms top out around 15 to 20 degrees before real damage sets in. Butia eriospatha, the woolly jelly palm fro...
08/30/2026

Most jelly palms top out around 15 to 20 degrees before real damage sets in. Butia eriospatha, the woolly jelly palm from the mountains of southern Brazil, has been documented surviving down into the single digits.

I lost a Butia capitata in the ground back in 2008. This one is built differently, and it is exactly the kind of species that keeps a zone pusher curious.

08/28/2026

Bare root palms lose something the moment they come out of the ground: root hairs. Those hairs are microscopic and they start dying within hours of hitting open air, and they are what actually pull in water.

Shipping in the pot, soil intact, keeps that whole system alive and working. It is not a marketing detail, it is the difference between a palm that stalls for weeks and one that just keeps growing.

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Saukville, WI
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