Get a heavy duty syringe (they are used to inject juices into poultry prior to cooking) and inject undiluted herbicides directly into the stem. There will be no evidence.

This is just an idea, I've never done it.

They might not go for the "mysterious death syndrome" and instead simply fine you for not complying.Those associations are allowed to fine even if they are on weak ground rationally.The courts usually side with them because you signed a contract agreeing to give up your rights. As in nobody forced you to sign,etc,etc,
I know,stinks and doesn't sound fair.But even Donald Trump i think, gave in on the American flag bruhaha with his association!.

Im wondering if the tree stump removing stuff might work.. you know, that liquid you inject into a tree stump to dinally kill it. supposedly, after you cut a tree down, you're supposed to drill a hole in the center of the stump and fill it with the liquid, which makes the stump rot. MAybe if you can inject it into the trunk, it will begin to rot.

Get one of those ground injection fertilizer dispenser. The ones used for applying liquid fertilizer into the root zone. Instead of fertilizer use the strongest recommended mixture of Roundup Brush Killer. We do this in the north with multiflora rose which is very hard to kill. They should be dead in a month, at the very least they will look so bad that your ASSociation will want you to replace them.

Why do you not like the queens? If they are maintained and fed properly they are very nice looking. They do require more maintenance then your average palm though. Ten is a lot of Queens given the spacing they require. Do you have a picture? What would you put in their place? Also, how can you be sure the HOA will not make you replace the queens with new queens? Also, what if they let you pick the palm but want ones close to the size of your queens? That could be extremely expensive.

The question is how to poison the HOA. LOL! Just kidding HOA.

I can understand why you would different palms- if you live in z10, there are a number of beautifull, low maintenance, fast growing palms to choose from. Queens are nice, but they drop TONS of gooey fruit, are not self cleaning and require high doses of fertilizer to look good. I had a canary island date palm that i replaced with a jubaea chilensis (these look very similar but are self cleaning and lack the horendous thorns that the phoenix have). Although the Canary Island Date was still small and not a big problem to move, and i didnt have a HOA in my way. In my area, queens are the norm, but instead of queens, i am planting dypsis decari, Bismarkia Nobilis, dypsis decipiens and archontophoenix.

Hi everyone. I took some shots of the Queens today...the battery on the camera was dying and it was getting dark quickly so had to rush. I just moved in last month so these are the first palm shots. =) Anyway, to answer your question kitchenshock about Queens - they are fine but just not my taste personally. As you and others mentioned above, they are messier than many other palms, and way too common in this area. Growing a Queen Palm here is like growing an Oak Tree in the Midwest. The HOA may in fact require a like-kind replacement; however, they'll just have to fine me then as it's my home and I'll do with it as I please. I know that sounds arrogant, but seriously, those policies are a little absurd. I know a home a block down has several cactuses growing in their front yard so I need to speak with that owner and see what problems they encountered with the HOA. The owners are probably from Arizona, as it's the first cactuses I've seen in Florida - talk about unique! The species I'd be planting in the Queens places would be mostly Royal palms and maybe a Coconut or two since they're just marginal in this area of Central Fla. I also have 2 CIDPs and 2 sagos which I left out of this post for sake of time. My yard is just under 1/2 acre so yes, 10 Queens seems a bit excessive. And thank you to everyone who posted with the great advice and questions! =)

Queens 1 and 2.

Royal thanks for the pictures. One approach you may want to take with the board is one of safety. Its a well known fact that Queens have very weak root systems and they topple very easily in hurricane force winds. Some of your Queens could do some serious damage if they get blown into your house during a hurricane. While I like the Queen palm I will not plant anymore in my garden because of the weak root system.

Be careful with the Royals. Once they get established they get big quickly and will dominate what ever they are placed next to. A two story can handle them but you wouldn't want too many of them in the yard. When planted close to a house they tend to look like cement posts when you look at them from inside the house. I would not want one planted in front of that window the way the Queen is now.

I know what you mean about HOA's. We have one where I live and they can be a real PIA sometimes.

Your yard looks very pretty. Maybe one reason you dont like your queens is that they need some trunk debooting. I would be careful about using the stump removal product. If I am not mistaken, you cant plant another tree in its place for quite some time...because the chemicals have leached into the soil and would be harmful to the surrounding or new plants. Good luck, hope you change your mind.

Am pretty sure the HOA will ask you to plant another queen in place of the one you just kill. Wasting time and money... what you need is something like kitchenshock approach.

NamNhi

I've decided not to kill the Queens...for now (do I hear an applause?). Instead, I'm going to play a bit of a game with the HOA. This March I will have that giant Queen in the front of the yard right up against the house professionally removed and replaced with a coconut palm of about the same size. Who would even notice? =P Well, if this produces no fines or intervention from the association, I'll do some more in the future. I know it'd be a lot cheaper to do everything all at once (economies of scale - remember that from Economics class? Been a long time.), but even if there were no HOA governing the neighborhood, I'm not sure if I want to spend all that cash right now to re-landscape a newly purchased home. Maybe I need to get sick of them first, then kill. I'm also new to owning landscape size palms so maybe I'll give them a fighting chance and see what happens. Someone even told me you can make jam out of the fruit...could be fun I suppose.

Standing ovation!

royal that's sounds like a good idea. If you clean your queens up and feed them you should have some really nice looking trees by mid summer. They are a very pretty palm when maintained. I know they are very common but even a common plant can be a specimen if well taken care of. Plus, they are a very good selection for your zone.

Best thing iv'e read since i been looking at this thread !
Sorry but i know and all my other cold blooded friends
know how hard it is for us to grow palms in our areas.
And most of us can't stand to see them killed from poisons
or whatever else could do it.
Good decision ! 2 thumbs up !!

My thought -- assuming you did decide to poison them -- was how suspicious it would look to have 10 trees of the same type die "at once". The HOA would have every reseason to suspect foul play.

This thread really exemplifies why many of us gardeners want nothing to do with these HOAs. It's sad that the morons (sorry for the language) who run these want such a homogeneous look to their neighborhoods rather than having some variety.

Look back at those pictures. How can you kill something that beautiful ?

For one, 10 palms of the same variety is too much. My lot size is only .40 acres so there's not much space for other types of palms. I did plant a nice size Bottle Palm last weekend, and it looks good to see variety in the yard. A couple more weeks and my 20ft coconut palm will be going in the yard as planned, finally have a yard that I can take the credit (and fines) for. =)

Yeah, with a good (extensive) fertilization and a bit of cleaning, your queens can look great. From the looks of the last pic, theres also a phoenix (canariensis?). with time, that one will also look awesome. here are some well maintained queens around town and they look great, granted they are probably fertilized constantly.

{{gwi:1117293}}

Your problem is not the palms you want to remove,or replace.Your problem is you agreed to live under a H.O.A dictatorship.

"Your problem is not the palms you want to remove,or replace.Your problem is you agreed to live under a H.O.A dictatorship"

That you are the first person to express the obviousness of this statement is frightening, but not all that surprising!

HOAs are the curse of this society. At our last property we had one, and the only way I got around them was to plant things in containers. For instance, I had an entire vineyard in containers hidden from their sight. When we moved the vineyard came with us, and yep, we moved to a non-HOA property. Turns out they are hard to escape.

New property is acreage on a private road. We all had to pitch in to re-pave the road, then the committee running that decided we needed gates at each end of the private road. At least they don't dictate what we can or can not plant.

We have about 9 queen palms and a few Mexican Fan palms and they are both very messy. Anyone want a baby palm? They come up everywhere here all the time. We try to pluck out the babies, but now and then one comes up smack in the middle of a shrub and once they get bigger, not so easy to pull out. DH panics every time he sees one of those flower pods forming and out comes the tree loppers.

Good luck with your palm swap project!

royalpaulm...are you near the coast in Central Florida? I was curious when you said queens are the norm but you want to try a coconut (plus you are z10). Sounds like me but I'm in Orlando. I just closed on my first house in Florida back in May...my biggest desire was to find a neighborhood that looked immaculate but had no real HOA. I found it and am loving it.

My HOA in Maryland was ridiculous. They approached me when I was installing a professionally constructed (and very nice) retaining wall yet didn't say a word to the lady with fake flowers in her yard. They later stopped by to say how nice it looked and wished the other owners would take more pride in their yard. I rented in Florida for a while where they did the landscaping. If you planted something in the ground, it was pulled the next week. So far at my new place, I have 2 coconuts and 2 majesties planted and nobody to care! :D

I absolutely hate queen palms. A neighbor planted a row next to my fence and didn't take care of them causing the limbs to constantly fall and hang over the fence into my property creating a huge obstacle and nuisance for me and interfering with my ability to walk across the narrow pathway that surrounds my pool. Same story on my other side fence with a neighbor who has just one within also planted within 2 feet of the fence and again never removes the overhanging limbs. I have an hoa and yet they don't enforce the removal of these dangerous nuisance limbs by their owners leaving me, a disabled elderly person to have to pay to remove the limbs ,which is a huge stress and financial burden to me. The trees can be nice if maintained constantly but because they are cheap people plant them and then many don't prune them cause big problems for neighbors. I'm so sick of these trees, they block my free access, prevent me from enjoying my back yard. They are a fire hazard, a tripping hazard, when the limbs hand down to the ground over my fence and even one limb blew in my face causing me to fall. Any suggestions?