Wow, I'm impressed the two little ones survived if they were that small and
in pots, too! But plants are living things, and even in the same species
some individual plants are just tougher than others.

If you decide to you need to keep them in pots indefinitely because of your
clay soil, you could try sinking the pots into the ground in the fall and
pulling them back out in the spring. Make sure they are in a spot where
water won't pool in the hole and rot the roots. This won't prevent foliage
damage, but it will protect the roots and help the plants survive.

Alternatively, each fall you could wrap the pots in a thick layer of
mulch/straw/hay contained with plastic or fabric (be sure water drains
readily out of the bottom of your "package" - you don't want to trap water
in there and rot your plants). This will insulate the roots somewhat.

Or, you could bring them into your house/garage/shed on the coldest nights.

Whether they are in pots or you plant them in the ground, try to locate them
on the south side of your house or somewhere else protected from north winds
(such as on the south side of a fence, a stand of trees, or even a tall
hedge) - it will make a lot of difference.

Good luck,
Laura




"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 22 Jul 2005 14:24:23 -0500, "Laura"
wrote:

How small were they? You might have had better luck with larger plants
(assuming that they had been grown outdoors in a location that gets some
winter frosts so that they would not be so shocked by your climate). But
then you would have had a much larger $$ risk, since the big ones are
pricey.

Also, 7b's a pretty marginal zone for cycas revolutas. Were the three that
survived in more protected locations than the others?


Most of them were just small ones no bigger than a baseball across the
long axis. Paid around $3.00
each for them in bulk on Ebay. They were rootless and leafless, and each
put out only 1-2 leaves
before the winter. Two that survived were from that group, and not only
did they live through the
winter, they never even lost their leaves, even though they were iced over
at times. They were
given the same conditions. All of those were still in plastic pots. The
third one that survived
was a larger, more expensive one that had maybe 20 leaves on it when I
bought it. I had put it in
the ground to see how it would do (even though I have red clay soil). It
survived (though half of
the leaves died) and is now, as I mentioned, putting on new leaves as of
now.






Just curious,
Laura

"Darren Garrison" wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 22:37:04 -0400, Darren Garrison

wrote:

I live in Zone 7b South Carolina. I bought a few small Cycas revoluta
(Sago Palm) last year to see
if they could handle my climate. Almost all of them died over the
winter,
and the three that
survived haven't put on any new leaves.

As an update, I looked at the largest of my three surviving Sagos today,
and it has a throw of 8
leaves coming out from the top.