Fall update on the Banana plants

The first banana plants I purchased was back in fall of 2009, 2 musa basjoos which survived until I tried to bring them indoors and over-winter however the lighting was not adequate enough and those ended up rotting.

I then bought a couple more in spring of 2010, small 2 inch pt musa basjoos, and these grew to 4-5feet in the season even after being planted 1 foot deeper than soil level. Here's the result of last fall.

After being over-wintered which I have further details from my earlier blog: http://stevesbamboogarden.blogspot.com/2011/04/uncovering-musa-basjoo.html one of them was completely protected however the other one which has a leaf that grew and pierced the plastic ended up dying to the ground, but still both of them made it back. The one on the right was success fully protected to at least 1 foot above soil level.

Dying to ground:

 Psuedostem well protected.

 

Here are some pictures of both of them side by side. The left one which died to the ground had more energy transferred over to the pups which all survived and therefore has a bushier appearance, and ended up with a main psuedostem closer to 5 inches as opposed to 6 inches on the one on the right however both banana plants are about 9 feet tall from the base to leaf tip. 

Here are some closer shots to show the difference between top killed(left) vs survival (right).

left(top killed) Notice how the pups are nearly the same size as the main stem. 

Here's the one on the right which was successfully protected and it clearly still has a larger mother stem with smaller pups.

I did have a 3rd musa basjoo which was divided up into 5 sections and I gave away 4 of them while the last one was planted 1foot deep in the ground a few days ago, and it should look similar to the 2 giants in the previous pictures by next year.

Here's my musa sikkimus which is distinguished by its dark stripes which didn't grow much over the summer due to being in an under-sized pot however I didn't need it to get too large this year since I just needed it to be big enough to be over-wintered outdoors being planted 1 foot deep.

One of my ensete glaucums did not survive maybe due to late frosts, but the one that was in the wall o water did, and it has reached a decent size so I planted that one in the ground to hope it overwinters successfully.

Ensete Mauralii: These guys are still in pots, and I'm not sure if these guys even have a chance of over-wintering outdoors in zone 6, but I might over-winter them indoors, let the psuedostems grow taller and then plant them 2 feet deep, with top protection to hope they can take our winters. They are still in 5 gallon pots.