They should be growing by now. If they are all soft and mushy they may be dead.Leave them alone and see if they pup.You should always protect your basjoos with a leaf enclosure in zone 7. I used the bottom half of a 32 old trash barrel (plasic) filled it with dry leaves and overturned it on to the plant.I used a couple of thin bamboo stakes around it to keep it from blowing away.Two separate basjoos came back with method in zone 6.Good Luck.

Jeff, If you are in northern NJ, are you sure you aren't in zone 5 (or even lower)?

Easternmost Bergen County (and nearby NYC suburbs are in zone
7a). You can thank the Atlantic Ocean and the Urban Heat Island Effect for that. In fact, last winter was a zone 8 winter.

Wow, that's amazing. I did not know about that. Well you learn something new every day! :)

my bananas have been growing since late March. I don't think they made it man. I am Z7 in NJ, but south of you on the NJ shore. I didn't even protect mine at all this winter. It doesn't sound good for your plants.

Roy

I dug up all of my musa basjoo and stored them in my garage for the winter. Didn't put them out until late April but they're growing fast now and most have 4 or 5 leaves already (3-5 foot stems).

I'm in Bergen near the NY border and I always thought I was in Zone 6. Some online tools still say my zip code is Zone 6, have the zone been updated recently?

Well, yes, some online tools have updated the zones (not done too long ago as I recall). In the past, zone 7 was New York City and its suburbs were 6b, but some online zone tools (e.g. arbor day foundation), now list the easternmost suburbs of Bergen county as 7 (up to NY state).--I'm about just 10-15 minutes outside of Manhattan. Don't forget, not all of this is necessarily due to global warming, as suburbs get paved over with concrete and trees get cut down, they tend to heat up.--Not that any of this matters one iota in terms of my banana treatment. I take them all in and don't bother worrying about having to protect them outside. Our winters may be a zone 7 but they are also very wet, and I worry about the tubers rotting in the cold wet conditions. Happy gardening!

Thank you all for the responses. I guess I will have to pick up some replacements. This time I will protect them with bags of leaves.

Jeff

Like njoasis eluded to...it's easier to dig them up and store them dry in a garage or basement. The way I see it, this has 3 distinct advantages:

1) You don't have to worry about cold + wet
2) Since the stems do not freeze to the ground, you will have bigger plants much faster because each spring as new leaves will start to unfurl where they left off.
3) You don't have to limit yourself to super cold hardy varieties. Almost any Musa or Ensete will handle this quite well.

I'm not suggesting you do this with dozens of plants as it can become quite laborious. But a handful of stems can be taken in each winter to ensure some nice big plants.

The only real disadvantage is the labor.

x

I have overwintered Musa raja puri and Ensete Maurelli in my basement with good luck. They had very little water and not much light.A few of us have not had luck with basjoo under these conditions.Maybe a cool garage would work better. IMHO the fun with basjoo is that you Can grow it in the ground.That is the whole idea of it.Iff you are going to dig every fall, there are much more attractive ones to grow than basjoo.

I'm agreeing about there being more attractive ones than basjoo if you're going to dig them up anyway. Go for something that stores well, grows really super fast, faster than a basjoo-- and has red in the leaves like a bordelon.

I have had a musa basjoo in the ground since 2005 I am about 30 miles south of Chicago zone 5 and it has been doing great. I just cut it to the ground and throw mulch over it, uncover it in late April the only issue is after 3 years it is starting to thin out in the center so this spring I planted a baby in the middle so we will see.The clump is about 3 - 4 feet around now.

right zonepusher. The problem is people hear that basjoo is "hardy" and don't protect it. He would have been better off covering with leaves or throwing a trash barrel over it, than testing the soil temp.It takes about five minutes to protect each of my basjoos for winter

Happy Basjoo

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:411950}}

This is my 3 year old grove in 2007
{{gwi:405246}}