First decide what variety. What best for your zone. Zone 8 offers some good choices cold tolerant trunking palms.

Why not just plant a palm already started like a Pindo Butia - which may do very well by you. Seeds are so slooow. I know north TX can get some artic blasts so I would start off planting on the sunniest side of the house or wall in the Spring. A tracky palm would do very well by you. I wouldn't plant until April in your area.

Hope that helps:-)

To translate, jstall, a "tracky" palm is Trachycarpus fortunei or windmill palm, one of the best ones for your area. A slightly faster one for you might be the common palmetto (Sabal palmetto). The thing to remember is that all frost tolerant palms are painfully slow growing, so if you start from seed, expect at least five years before you see a trunk on the palm, and at least twenty before you can stand under it!

Thompson & Morgan may have seeds for windmill palm and/or Mediterranean fan palm--or so I remember from their catalog twenty years ago! I would just be guessing about any other seed company.

Good luck!
Kevin : )

You can definately start off from seed, but i will take about 2 months to germinate and about 2 years before mature leaves start to take over. I bought a windmill palm seedling that was probably only 2-3 months old at the time, and 3 years later and they are on more than a foot tall to the top leaf (probbaly more like 6 inches tall).

Mos people usually start with 3 to 5 gallon plants in northern areas, and people buy very mature plants in the south.

Palm seeds should be started indoors with a seedling heating pad underneath and grow lights on top for best results. Ideal germinating temp for most palms is 75-95 degrees.

Good luck!

check out (seedrack.com) they have some pretty good cold hardy seeds & cheap too! they also ship very fast. ive bought some chilean wine palms, blue mex., sabal minor var. louisiana, & canary island palm seeds & ive had good success with all but sabal minor var. louisiana for some reason? i only got 3 to germinate out of 12 , but i would check them out, am getting some bismarckia's, silver mazari's & trachy waggies to germinate this winter. goodluck!

ortanique is pretty good.Christmas palms are not cold hardy at all and I doubt they grow good in the house long term.