yes this happens to me each year its the heat drying the air... its way to dry for the palms u should def. try to mist them daily make sure u dont have any spider mites also as they suck all the nutrients/life outta your plants. ( not as commen on palms tho ) what kind of light are they getting also? but yes mostly the really dry air.

thanks va beach
i figured it was the lack of humidity b/c they were all doing great until the real cold hit and the gas furnaces got cranked up more often. forgot about one. my big sago just started lightening up a lot on the lower fronds. bummer. it's about 3' in diameter and one of my favorites. the pindos seem to be pretty stout though. they didn't show any problems until a week ago or so. they all get a good amount of light each day.

Ive never really had this problem probably because my house usually doesnt get very dry even when the heat is on a lot. I do think it has to do with the heat (and the dryness of houses in the winter from the heat), and if you can find a room that doesnt get heated as much it might come back. If you have a garage to put them in that might work too. My garage is unheated, but it never goes below freezing, so even if your garage is unheated as long as it doesnt go below freezing your palms will be fine in there too.

Good luck!

Sounds like lack of humidity and possibly an issue with spider mites. I'm wintering several palms and bananas indoors at a retail store I own. I've been learning along the way also...

Among the similar palms I have, an almost 5-foot 4-trunk pygmy date and a 4 1/2 foot washy. Ironically both the washy and pygmy are doing as well as any of my palms, actually excellent. We are colder here and the hard cold hit earlier and it is very dry indoors. These are growing very well under bright florescent lighting, they really seem to like it. Wasahy/pygmy: Water, water! Mine seem to drink like fish. I literally have to water the washy every day, or every other day at the least. If not it gets the tell-tale droopy lower fronds. Keep it watered and it is opening a new fan every other week and growing like mad surprisingly! I still can't believe how fast my washy is growing in a pot indoors, it's amazing. Pygmy date seems to be a heavy drinker also, definitely keep it well watered with clean, preferably home-distilled water. I mist these palms, along with all the palms in the store, about 2x a week. It is quite a job, takes me a good hour to get to all of them! Also wintering indoors are many large basjoos, trachys, xmas palms, etc. These all love to be misted and well watered.

Check for spider mites. They can be hard to spot on palms. I did have a smaller trachy get them, caught it on time and its doing fine now. Look for those little spider webs... My basjoos got attacked bad early in the winter. I got it under control eventually with a little trial and error. They look great now that new leaves have replaced the chewed ones and have been able to be pruned. Again, water, water, and mist for these! My largest basjoo which has 4 more pups now is in danger of exceeding the 14' ceiling in the store. I don't know what I'm going to do if it does before I can take it home and put it back in the ground this spring. It has slowed to putting out one new leaf a week but they are in excess of 6 feet long and at least 2 feet wide. Most of my other bananas ranging from 4 to 8 feet tall are still putting out a new leaf every 3 to 5 days now.

I'd also advise against fertilizing them during the winter. Good luck with your palms!

P.S. If you have spider mites on palms, Home Depot carries the stuff I use on palms and bananas. It works AWESOME and is actually labeled for use on palms and others. Volck Oil Spray (concentrate). About $5 for a bottle which makes something like 30 gallons mixed. One or two treatments and they are good for the winter. Killed all the mites on my bananas and little trachy, have not seen any mite evidence for a long time now with just 2 treatments. My bananas had them BAD also! Shines up the leaves and makes the plants look real good also.

Thanks everyone. I have kept an eye out for spider mites and haven't noticed them, but I'll continue to check. I did have some scales I had to spray for during the fall though. I see a little bit of this back on a few, so I'll have to do it again soon. Maybe I'll try to water them more often too. I rarley water them since I brought them in, b/c I overwatered a few of my planted trachys last summer, but stopped and they came back well.
mn palms-how's that monster windmill by your pool handling the winter? That thing's awesome. I bet you had to put some work into keep her warm and dry, huh?

Believe it or not, my protection for my large windmill was pretty easy and has been bullet-proof so far. I posted some pictures of the enclosure setup and construction in a thread here. It is probably buried deeper by now but I think it was one started by Jimhardy about cold or snow or something. I'll try to find and link it.

Long story short, I covered the big trachy once temps were to drop under 20 at night. It is on a thermocube which keeps it constantly between 35-45F in there. Barely burns any power, super efficient. It is capable of keeping the inside of the enclosure more than 70 degrees warmer than outside temps if needed and all lights are activated. Lowest we have had so far this winter has been -15F one night. I can't wait to uncover it! Under two months now... I'm thinking early March, maybe March 1st. I might leave a roof over it for a few weeks though, we do get heavy wet snow in March sometimes.

3.5' in ground needle palm didn't get covered until temps were to get down to the single digits. I just threw a large plastic garbage can over it and have a 6-foot rope light around the trunk under the mulch right at the dirt to help keep the ground/roots from freezing. This one should be a good experiment...

Keep that washy well watered though. I never realized they were such heavy drinkers until i brought mine indoors this fall.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/palms/msg1214124517109.html?80

Here's where there are some pictures of my protection if you have not yet seen it.

Tnwindmill, all the advice you have gotten here has been great, and pretty spot on. Low humidity and spider mites go hand in hand. I have been fighting them most of the winter, but have been able to largely keep them under control. Usually, on warm days 50+, Ill take whatever is infested outside and give it a good hard hosing off on both sides of the leaves and leach / wash the soil good. I do have some insecticidal soap, which seems to really curtail their numbers too. The washing/ misting does keep the numbers down, but if that is the only treatment, they quickly recover and come back with a vengence so it requires diligent attention and work to keep the numbers down. I have found that doing the washing/ misting/ showers, along with once in a while spraying with insecticidal soap that that really works best.

The other thing I do is keep the humidity up indoors. I try to keep it right at 50%, but it does flux up and down between 40 and 60 percent. Usually either extreme is short lived however. One thing to keep in mind when humidity inside gets high is mold. It will generally tend to form behind things that are very close against the wall, and that are lowest to the floor. I did find a couple of small mold spots behind furniture that was very close to the wall. It was not much, but still, it was there. That said, it was not black mold. Fore me, since there is a crawl space under my floor, the temps down at floor level are often several degrees cooler than just a foot or so above, and if the humidity gets high enough, condensation can form on the lower part of the walls, especially behind anything that is close to the wall and limits airflow. Simple solutions to that are to move anything that is very close to the wall, out several inches, and also keeping a close eye on the humidity, and not allowing it to be excessively high for extended periods. I found the mold after we had a protracted rain event, where the outdoor humidity was VERY HIGH for several days, and that caused the humidity inside to stay fairly high for that period. My solution now, is I leave the humidifiers off unless it gets down to about 40%, then I will turn them back on until it hits 50%. That seems to regulate the humidity quite well.

It sounds to me like humidity is probably your main problem for your plants. Im wintering my pigmy date palm, as well as a few bananas indoors, and I also have many other tropicals that come inside for the winter, and usually I have had no problem at all so long as my humidity does not get drastically low. I think that goes a very long way in helping get plants through the very dry indoor winter conditions.

Let us know how your plants do. Best of luck!