in north carolina you can wait till the pups get about 4 to 5 feet tall and them take them up. sometimes i will plant directly in another spot but i usually put them in large pots for the rest of the season. most of these i give away to friends. you will need to dig the ones in the ground up around the end of oct. to the first of nov. depending on when the first frost comes. a trash bag around the corm, lay them down in a cool(not freezing) basement floor with little to no light or in the crawlspace of the house. bring them out around the 15th of april or after the last frost date. i would just put them all there and forget about them till spring. they will be fine.

The basjoos should be ground hardy in your zone. The Zebrina is not (I killed a few last year), and need to be overwintered.

What about overwintering in pots in the house?

I was thinking about potting mine up and putting them in my sunroom. The sunroom is not heated but does not ever get below freezing.

Any one have any thoughts on this?

This is my first year, one plant is about 7ft and the other is only 4ft.

I was planning on potting a couple to grow inside. I have NO available sunny space, so that means grow lights. Maybe I'll have a little jungle in my bathtub. My real goal is to have a couple of large plants next year and to have all of them survive.

Indoors over winter you can expect spider mites. You'll need plenty of light (hopefully natural sunlight), fans for air circulation and regular misting / humidity to avoid mites. Even then, no guarantees.
Then when spring arrives, the leaves may fry in the sun, so very gradual exposure to the sun is recommended.

Cheers, Barrie.

since you can leave the basjoo in the ground, leave it there. It will come back bigger and better next year anyway. Some of these folks in your zone make little cages and stuff them with an insulating material to help keep some of the trunk height. My basement experience proved that my heated basement is too warm. I lost all the height, but 100% of them threw pups this spring when I planted the stumps. So if you have a slightly heated garage, that would be better. Just above freezing. If you overwinter them in the house, EXPECT spider mites. They will happen almost 100% of the time. I'd much rather store dormant than fight the mites....

Yes, the mites are a pain in the butt. I'm going the dormant route with the basjoo too. The one I left in the ground came back so much bigger and lusher than the one I fought pests on indoors all winter. But if you are willing to treat for mites, it is a fun houseplant to have around. The zebrina will have to come in - at least it's still fairly small. I wish I had a cool basement or crawlspace but mine is way too warm.

This may be why mine did so good in my greenhouse last year it was cool but not too cool. I have never had spider mites on my bananas though I have them in the duck and chicken coop right beside the greenhouse. My greenhouse stays at 50*-70* during the winter, bananas keep growing though slowly. The heater is small and has a fan. Greenhouse stays very humid and moist and is very small.

I have a huge pot of mature basjoos that I purchased last year. The pot probably weighs over 1000 lbs with activly growing plants and pups. (I moved it this spring by myself, using pvc pipe to roll it slightly downhill on rocks(using cardboard)and then concrete... it took me several hours to get it moved.) That said, I just can't manage getting it to another spot and then digging a hole large enough in the extremely rocky ground out here on the escarptment; so next year I'm going to plant the pups in the places I want them to be and keep the big pot where it is.

This past winter I think I was lucky in having the mother(s) survive in the pot. Out at my house we had many more nights lower than freezing than did Dallas and several nights in the teens; again more than Dallas. I started getting the stems wrapped with bubble and blankets but didn't get the plastic on in time to keep them from getting soaked. They remained wet and frequently freezing throughout the winter. In the spring when I unwrapped them, of course, the stems/stalks were mush all the way below ground, but new shoots came up quickly right beside the mushy nubs. Was I lucky???

So, if I treat them properly this winter... ???

Here's my questions:

(The big pot will be in full sun all winter on SW side, near two story white wall that absorbs heat during day to release at night, with fence on S side, and protected from north high wind northers but still getting some western cold winds, slightly buffered by parked autos and huge tree.)

If I do the wrap how does the basjoo do under all that insulation and plastic when the temperature gets into the very sunny 70's F or even 80's F that we frequently have throughout the winter here, sometimes immediately following hard freezes?

How do you keep them from cooking? That is my biggest concern.

I have no place to keep them "cool". Even if I could manage to get them into the garage I couldn't keep the temps even below 70 F most days because of direct sunlight and many warm temps during winter.

I'm really would appreciate some help here. I'm hooked on banannas and have obtained some DC's and SDC's this summer but can manage those in my greenhoused for the winter. BUT I do want to branch out and get some more varieties, some that will be too large for the GH's.

Thanks so much for some help.
geekgranny

See my message posted August 17 in forum above "Banada hardiness" - we over-winter bananas in the ground in Ontario - where a "cold snap" means a week or two when the "high" for the day is minus 20 or something!