# Cutting down a mexican fan palm



## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

It is not a good idea to leave stumps of anything. You just ask for bug and other problems. 

Your palms are shallow rooted. If you can get to them and get a chain around them and hooked to a solid truck or tractor, I would pull them over when you can get a hold of them. 

Then you can cut them up. But be prepared for your chainsaw to get gummed up since they are fairly fibrous. 

You already know but make sure you have some heavy gloves handling them! Suckers can tear up your hands if you grab them the wrong way.

It is too bad somebody overplanted them. They are rather nice looking and low maintenance compared to other things.

Somebody else might want them and be willing to help you pull them out if you do not have access to a truck, tractor or whatever. They usually take to transplanting fairly well as I remember. Try a CL post?


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## joshik (Sep 17, 2012)

yeh i know... i feel bad cutting them out. i was thinking of selling them but i dont think they have much resale value. 

i was thinking of posting it on CL... free if you help take it out. unfortunately, there is no room for a truck to pull the tree out. 

if someone was to want to take it and replant it, would you just cut off all the branches and then pull the whole trunk and root system out at once?


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## user1007 (Sep 23, 2009)

joshik said:


> unfortunately, there is no room for a truck to pull the tree out.
> 
> if someone was to want to take it and replant it, would you just cut off all the branches and then pull the whole trunk and root system out at once?


Obviously the more of the plant, save for extraneous branches that would be damaged anyhow, you can save the better its chances of snapping out of transplanting quickly.

So, if planning to rescue these I would dig around the base and root ball, and then pull them out as close to intact as possible. If you cannot get a truck it may just take a rope and some collective brute force. You risk pulling the wrong one out if you try to use a come-along or something hooked to another one. 

Would a little bobcat fit? Careful not to tear up your yard in the process here though. 

I guess the first thing is to see if anybody wants them.


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## Sami_3000 (May 2, 2013)

We took out an 8ft fan palm last month, I sawzalled the fans off then went out about a foot from the trunk and started digging for roots. They do have very shallow roots no deeper then 8 inches I'd say most cut with the shovel but there were groups of roots that were easier to get to with the sawzall. Once the roots were cut between my dad and I with shovels we lifted it out, ours went in the green waste can since they come up like weeds here.


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