Sandra,
Mine or more like rabbits here,in fact,mine are 10ft tall,and the pups are as big as the mother,3rd summer outside in the ground,still no fruit,I dig mine up and repot for winter bring inside greenhouse and let them keep growing.
Don

I am very new to growing bananas for fruit, but the advice a gentleman gave me was to cut down pups. Do this until the mother has finshed her cycle, leaving just one or two for replacement. The way I understand it, one would continuously cut the pup back close to the ground. When the mother is done fruiting (I hope someday to see this happen) cut the mother back to the ground (only fruits once from p-stem) and allow its replacement to mature. There is a 3 or 4 tiered approach that some use for in ground(mother, teen, baby). For potted bananas, you might want to do a 2-tiered approach to conserve energy and space (mom, replacement for mom). When you cut the mother back, it is also time to remove all the pups that are not part of the tiered approach and replenish the soil. At this point the pup's corms should be huge and the replacement for the mother should take off like a rocket with all that stored energy. One of the reasons for doing this is that removing pups during growing supposedly slows the mother's bloom time. When I talk about cutting the pups back, I mean horizontal cut accross the rings. From that point, it will grow again, cut it back.

Please take all of this with a grain of salt, I have cut back my in ground "gold finger" pup twice this year so far. The mother is growing like crazy and the pup just resprouts and gets whacked again. I do have a potted SDC that I removed a pup from to ship to a friend so I'm not 100% with my own advice, but the next pup will be cut.

maybe some help?
-Ethan

drybal, how do you protect cavendish in zone6? do you dig them up?

Don, Ethan - thanks for sharing. Last night I cut off the 4 pups... it probably will not be the last time !!! And, as I was watering, I noticed 3 pups from the 3-ft pup I transplanted last spring !! I think I will cut those off, also, as my home (and I) can not support more than 2 full size potted banana trees over the winter :^). Worst case is that neither makes it over next winter - I can get a 'great-granchild' from family/friends that have the second (third, fourth, etc) generation.

Nucci 60 - the safest thing you can do is pot and bring inside for the winter. It is kinda fun to look out of a window through a banana tree and watch the snow come down.