What you can do is to trim off any brown sheaths, cut those out and remove, exposing only the green live sheaths. You need evey square inch of photosynthesizing plant tissue. You can also cut off half of the number of banana fruits and throw away if you want bigger sizes that will ripen on your plant.

Most resource are stored in the corm and the trunk, so it is really not a surprise that for us banana growers in the colder areas can have just fruits without any leaves after the winter season.

Also explains why we would never achieve yield higher than those in the tropics or warmer areas.

Thanks for the good ideas. Its probably within a week or so of harvest now. Most winters any more are mild enough to not set back my trees much, but we had a big frost in late Feb. This bunch of fruit has been on since early last fall, quite a long time!

Gary