What can I say, I like to zone push. It's fun when I find something that survives long term that you wouldn't expect in upstate NY! e.g. I have a pair of Sabal minor palms that I have overwintered the same way as these monkey puzzle trees for the past 5 or 6 winters. The palms are slowly getting bigger and (in most years) have little to no damage to their leaves when I uncover them in spring!

I was thinking about your monkey puzzle the other day. So far so good ;-)

Dax

treeguy, see my thread on MP tree. Someone found a nice one in Nova Scotia. In the Andes they are found in high elevations with a lot of snow. I think they can take cold better than hot & muggy.

It does seem hot and muggy is worse. My summers should be OK as we don't get too warm here: 70s - 80s with three or less days hitting 90 or above. It's either the duration of cold or the sub-zero (degrees F) that I think will do mine in. Last winter we had an entire month that did not go above freezing once, including some below zero F temps. I look at it as a challenge to see how big I can get them to grow before they fry.

Once they're a little larger, I'm going to select the most vigorous and prune out the rest.