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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Fall update on the banana plants #2

It's almost time to cover up all these bananas once the frost hits, and there's not much chance of a late warmup. To start out, with the musa mekong giant seedlings that I got about 4 weeks ago, each of them have put out a new leaf and seem to be thriving after having been planted in the ground for over a week. I always try to plant them at least a foot in the ground so that they automatically have winter protection, and I usually add more protection to ensure they come back strong the next year.

Here's how they looked when they were first potted up.



Here' are the same seedlings after being planted a foot deep. Each of them have also seemed to drop a leaf or two as well however as long as they show new growth, I trust that these guys should come back strong in the spring with some good protection.




I try to give them enough spacing so they can spread their rhizomes and create a banana grove.

Musa basjoo:

Here are the main ones which have stopped growing by now with the cooler temperatures and have some wind damage.
 Here's one of the pups

Musa sikkimus: This one was stunted in it's pot all summer long, but it looks happy in it's new location with a few pink elephant ears around it.

Ensete glaucum snow banana: This banana is not really supposed to grow in zone 6a, but being 1ft below along with being so close to the house, I believe it should be able to over-winter pretty well with some additional protection.




Ensete Mauralii: These guys are supposed to be much more cold sensitive despite reports of them surviving zone 6 before. I would rather let them get a little bit bigger and taller before sticking them 1-2feet in the ground to over-winter outside.

2 comments:

  1. How did these work out for you this spring? Did these make it thru the winter?

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    1. Nothing except for the 2 huge basjoos and the basjoo pup made it through winter. They are starting to leaf out now, but we are about to get a big snow storm with freezing temperatures tomorrow so I hope they can make it through that.

      The ensetes are showing no hardiness at all regardless of how much protection I give them, and the mekong giants were likely too small to over-winter so deep planting wasn't enough. I ended up getting more mekong giant pups this spring which I am now babying inside.

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