Which kind of Palm?

All Friday night and into mid Saturday I was thinking about changing my Palm purchase from the Windmill Palm I purchased on Friday to something that looks more awesome, in particular the Canary Island Date Palm.

I planned to call Rainbow Gardens first thing in the morning, and I did call them around 10am.  I was told (incorrectly) that the Canary Island was not suitable for our climate and might freeze.  I replied that I had read otherwise, and I had a warm location, fenced in and next to power transformer, so it should be OK.  The lady then told she would check to see what they had in stock.

I didn't get a call back until around 4pm, and in the meantime I continued the online research I had been doing since Friday night.  First thing, the Canary Island has slightly lower freeze temperature than even the Texas Sabal, a native particularly recommended for San Antonio.  The Canary is cold hardy to 15-18 degrees, whereas the Sabal is cold hard to 16-18 degrees.  OK, no full size palm is hardier than the Windmill, imported from the base of the Himalayas, which is hardy to 5 degrees, but we don't need that here.

Or you can go by the zones.  San Antonio is Zone 8b/9a (20/25 degrees).  The Canary Island Date Palm is rated for Zone 8a (15 degrees).

But as I read more, and looked at more pictures, it appeared there just might be a problem with the size.  The top of the Canary Island gets to 28 feet wide.  While it might not grow that large until it gets out of the fenced area, it's going to get as large as it can, and would most likely grow to cover the CPS transformer before it grows above the roofline.  CPS would not like that.  The leaves may look soft, but palm leaves are spikey like little sharp knives and can cut.  The spines are even worse, more like chainsaw.  So having a big palm in my lot corner might do something for my ego, but it would make it difficult to go back there and do required yard maintenance or utility maintenance.

I am positioning the palm about 6.5 feet from the transformer, and 3.5 feet from the shed.  (I moved the shed 1 foot away from the transformer to give it more space on Sunday, making the total distance from shed to transformer 10 feet instead of 9.  The Canary Island will fill that 6.5 space before too long and become a big nuisance.  Basically, the leaves of the Windmill don't grow much larger than 5 feet even when the tree is fully grown to 20+ feet.  The Windmill has the shortest leaves of any full size palm, making it a likely "best" for my application.  The short leaf length also goes a long way to explaining the cold hardiness.

I had been thinking of taking a grand nursery tour, checking out the main Milberger's location as well as Rainbow Gardens again.  But I knew that would likely cut into my time for doing essential yard maintenance in preparation for shed and sprinker installations.

When the lady did call back, she said that the Canary Island should be fine and they had several nice ones in stock.  I replied that I had decided to stick with the Windmill because if I got a larger palm it would quickly grow to cover the CPS transformer and CPS wouldn't like that one bit.  I had also been worried about the palm size relative to my two sheds.

I decided to skip the nursery tour and just go to Schulz nursery to get the moisture gauge I had seen there a few weeks ago.  That showed that my patio side Crepe Myrtle had almost no moisture, but the bigger Crepe Myrtle did have heavy moisture in the bottom of the pot.  So I only watered the patio side tree that night, and then watered both of them heavily on Sunday night.