Post #778844 by LoriLovesTiki on Sun, Aug 13, 2017 7:15 PM

I'm late to the party but the best thing we ever did was to use artificial thatch on our tiki bar. It snows in NJ and my natural bamboo is the bane of my existence. But the fake stuff looks as good as the day we installed it. I have bananas that are probably 8 ft tall. In the fall, around the first frost, I cut them to the ground and pile mulch on top. Same with my elephant ears and any other tubers. We put most of our tikis in the shed and take down our masks and put blue tarps around the sides of our bar. (It's open on 3 sides.) We leave opening so we can go inside which we sometimes do before we take them down if the weather is mild.

I'd love to move to somewhere warmer! But ya know, jobs and family...