How much to trim a sago palm

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Like everything else in the world, opinions vary, even about how much to trim a sago palm. Since this is the day of the internet, you can find a very wide variety of opinions, all within seconds of Googling. This is my opinion.

My goal here at the Tropical Paradise is to have a beautiful, and lush, garden. I like the look of palm trees, but an average suburban lot is way too small for full-size palm trees, which look great from a distance, but up close they're telephone poles. My solution to that problem was to plant sago palms. And I really do want them to look like miniature palm trees, or ferns. So I trim them hard every season.

I've had this one for many years, and it's grown to that wonderful point where the trunk is actually a trunk, not just a pineapple shape. And I just love to see the trunk of a palm tree, or sago palm, neatly trimmed. So I trim off all of the previous year's growth.

Sago palms, as you know, aren't really palm trees, they're cycads. And unlike palm trees, which grow continuously, cycads (sago palms) only grow in short bursts (called flushes) once a year (twice if you're lucky). It happens when the weather warms up, and it's kind of fun to watch, it's fast! Every day when you walk out to the garden the fronds are longer, and greener, and lusher. Makes the previous year's fronds look kinda sad by comparison. In my opinion.

Sago palm with last year's growth trimmed off.

So today I put on my leather gauntlet gloves and did a neat trim. I like to fuss in the garden, and every time I do this, I try to snip the stubs down a little bit more. No, you can't scrape them off, like on a palm tree, but what you can do is to trim the trunk so that it has those nice little diamond shapes.

By the way, I cut off offshoots (called pups) just about right away. Years ago I used to let them grow on a bit, and then root them for more plants, but I don't need anymore plants here.

So there you go - now go trim that sago palm, and make it beautiful!

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