It's time. I cut mine down to 2+ feet. Pruning shears work well. The 5 gallon bucket might not give you the best results. My advice - build a simple cage with chicken wire or preferably a more rigid/dense fencing(no need to stake) , and fill that with leaves or pine needles - higher and much wider than the cut banana(s) - say 3' high x 3'+ diameter. By protecting the stem this way, come spring, you should have salvaged at least a foot or more of the stem - a nice head start to our short season. I have never had a problem with an established plant. Some people cover their cage with plastic or wrap the stem with bubble wrap, but I never have...I'll save that kinda attention for my windmill palm. Incedently, instead of a wire cage, surround the plant with bagged(tree)leaves and fill the center with loose leaves. This works well but is not the most attractive look... for the next 5 months.

I have attached some pics from 2007 - 2008. You can see some cages in 2007 where I did not cut the stems until it snowed and this year, I cut them right away - the last pic I think. Btw, you can fast forward thru the pics - click on the right side of the pics...

Here is a link that might be useful: pics

Nice set of pictures daryljurassic. I always dread this time of year. So far we only had really one night of cold weather 30F but it was the wet snow coming from the lake that did most of the damage. However my main basjoo cluster still looks okay. I will start this weekend to shut her down.

Daryl, another great slide show of the timeline for your plants, Are you going to post it on the Org. as well? I'm sure the folks there would love to see it also! Thanks again for posting the pics, always gives me hope for mine here in zone 5!!

daryljurassic,

Awesome pics! Looks like the plant in the background is Castor Beans? Am I correct? If so, what month did you plant it? I'm in zone 5a. I will be happy if it reaches 8 to 10 ft but I don't want it to reach beyond 10 ft.

Please let me know.

Thanks!

Neil

Thanks, yes I'll post it on bananas.org probably in a month or two. I'll wait till we get a snow pic...

Yes, those are castor beans. Like everything else around here, this year they didn't get as big as they normally do. A little chillier than normal, super dry and those f***ing japanese beetles...lol. The castor beans were started indoors in late March/ early April and went in ground May 1. The tallest were 17 feet. Last year 22 feet. Honestly, I'm not sure how to grow them smaller. I do prune alot of the higher up seed pods to prevent them from being top heavy and snapping. While this doesn't seem to effect the heighth, it does tend to make them "bushier". I guess starting them later may help for getting shorter ones but planting them where they get some shade would be my best advice. Hold off on the fertilizer. Also there's probably a shorter variety out there.

Are they hard to cut during clean up? 22 feet, holy smoke!!! :D Was it a tough battle to clean them up?

Daryljurassic, Thanks for the great tips! And those pics of your bananas are SO awesome!! I hope mine reach that height in the next year or so. Or I should say I just hope they make it through the winter! lol

I just have one problem... no leaves! Yep, not many decidious trees around here, so what does fall just blows away since we have very high winds here. Also, if I drive around looking for leaves they are all piled up out at the curb, because we are not allowed to set out bags of leaves for the trash in our area. The leaf trucks come around and suck them up. And since I am a rather petite female, I am not quite up to the task of raking up about 10 bags of other people's leaves. hahah

Soooo... any other suggestions that do not include leaves or mulch (it would just blow away). I am really stuck here, because I cannot really build a chicken wire cage myself either.

Does anyone know of any gadgets like that available to buy at home/garden stores or farm supply places? You would think someone would have pattented "Banana Tree Protectors" by now! lol

The easiest thing to do is to just cut it down and pile up a bag or two of shredded mulch on top of it and/or around the stalk. If the plant was established, this should work okay...Anything beyond this for an established musa basjoo in zone 6, like building cages etc, is just extra insurance and not mandatory...It just gives you a better chance of getting a BIG naner next year. Established meaning multiple pups were coming up and the plant was pretty big. I'm not sure if you were at this point?

Many good nurseries sell bales of pine straw(needles) or you could use straw. A hardware store should carry small rolls of fencing. If you bought a 10 foot roll, you wouldn't need to cut it. Just loop it around and connect each end with bread bag ties and thats the cage...

I have read that some use old car tires instead of the cage. Stacking them up and filling the center with whatever... Not quite the look for me, but it might blend in well with a gazing ball and those cheesey pink flamingos...lol.

I am trying something new this year on a few scraggly...banana plants out in my vegtable garden. Last spring, I found some styrofoam "boxes" at Walmart (on clearance) that are designed for protecting plants from frost - most likely for tomato starter plants. May not be a fair test cause they weren't the best looking or taken care of banana plants, but we'll see...

Geez! Wish I had read your posts BEFORE I went outside
and took my banana plant up. With your tips on winter protection, I'm sure it would have been ok. Do you think
it will survive if I plant it back and mulch heavily with
mulch and leaves?? It has pups too!!
Thanks.
Margaret

pearlgirl, now that you have disturbed it, I would not attempt to plant it again this lte. If it is a basjoo, you would have no problem overwintering it in zone 7. Wait 'till next spring now IMHO.

Yep, I'd second that. Too late now...I know the feeling. I used to be afraid to leave mine out. Next year, leave it out. You'll have bigger plants in the long run and its also alot easier:)

Daryljurassic, more great tips - thanks so much! Good luck with the styrofoam boxes.. you will definitely have to post and let us know how that worked out! You gave me another idea though.... the bales of straw. If I got some bales and put them around the bananas (sort of like a wall) and then maybe one on top, do you think that would be enough to protect them?

At this point, my 3 basjoos have been chopped down to about 12-18 inches from the ground, and their own leaves piled around the bases, and some burlap covering the stems. This is their first winter, so they are not extremely established. But they did get to around 4-5 ft. this summer and 2 of them had a couple pups each (which I just chopped off also, since they only grew to about 3-4 inches).

I don't know if straw bales are expensive...? But please let me know if you think the "Bale of Straw Fortress" would work. :)

I cut mine down about a week and a half ago. It was almost 7 feet tall, and its planted right next to the foundation of the house, so the basement wall should keep the ground from freezing somewhat. I loaded up 2 bags of that red cedar mulch, piled around the rootzone and around the stalk. Its about a foot deep. Then I cut the bottom off of an old trash can (seen that method done on here by another member) and filled it with straw, surrounding the rest of the stalk I didn't cut. Then I replaced the lid on the trash can. I covered the whole thing with a camoflauge tarp. Hopefully I can get it to at least come back from the roots next spring. I tried basjoo twice before in previous years, and they didnt' come back either time.

Conifer freak- If your weather allows, you can just go around your neighborhood and pick up the bales of straw that people are throwing out. I managed to pick up close to 40 of them last year. I don't think your basjoos are big enough to come back from the roots just yet, but then again I have never had basjoos come back for me...but if you do use the bales of straw fortress, I'd fill the middle around the stalks with leaves or something, you don't want to leave open air in there. The more mulch the better.

Island breeze, just curious.. what methods did you use in the past that did not work for the basjoos? We are practically in the same zone, so I am really keeping my fingers crossed now! I just threw a tarp over my burlapped basjoos (chopped down to about a foot w/ only inches of leaves around the stems). As I am able to gather any bags of leaves I will throw them under the tarp also. Unfortunately people don't throw out straw bales around here it seems.

The first year, I cut them down to about a foot tall, built a chicken wire cage around them about 3 feet wide, filled with leaves, and then covered with a huge black garbage bag. I did 2 with this method, but neither came back.

The second year, when I got my plant up to 7 feet, I cut the stalk down to about 5 feet, surrounded it with styrofoam boxes the whole height of the stalk, filled the inside with leaves, then took those brown paper yard waste bags filled with leaves and surrounded the styrofoam boxes with those for added insulation, then covered the whole thing with a tarp. The only thing is my back yard sits lower than my house, so in the winter and spring, it gets very wet in my yard, to the point that the water table only sits about a foot below ground level. This method failed too.

So this year, remembering that my house sits much higher than my back yard, I planted a basjoo right up against the foundation of my house along with much improved drainage. I remembered that cannas survive in the ground around here if planted right up against the foundation, so I'm hoping the same technique will work for basjoos as well, along with some extra help. Make sure wherever you are overwintering your basjoos, that they stay high and dry over winter to keep them from rotting.

coniferfreak,you can obtain the same results with bags of leaves. Cut the stem to desired length, put four plastic bags full of leaves around the stem, tie them together with twine and place one more bag on top.That method has been circling this forum for a few years now.

Nucci- have you tried that trash bag full of leaves method? It does seem very easy as well as easy cleanup, but I'd be concerned that the stem either wouldn't be able to breathe or that condensation would accumulate inside the mound of plastic bags. Although if it does work, I'd like to try it for myself.

islandbreeze, i use half of a trash barrel. i use the top half with a lid, and the bottom half I fill with dry leaves and turn it over on to the stem. I old plastic trash barrel will protect two plants. I don't use the leaf bag method because I am not trying to protect a lot of stem. My basjoos all came back with this method , but I lost two sikkimensis. They are real tricky in zone six.

Nucci60, Wouldn't the trash barrel method be similar to my using 5 gal. buckets? Someone earlier in this thread had recommended against doing that (which was my original plan), so I didn't. But now I am wondering if/why that wouldn't work... putting leaves inside the overturned buckets such as you are doing with the trash barrels. ? If yours come back using the trash barrel method, shouldn't it also work using the 5 gal. buckets? I was planning to put a tarp over them as well.

Anyone know of any reasons why that wouldn't work for me?

I protected my 4 month old basjoo very early. We were reaching 34F-37F about a month ago(not consistent though). However, my basjoo didn't show signs of dying. It even had 1 pup.

Anyways, my basjoo is short around 18-24 inch p-stem. I didn't cut it. They told me not to leave it in ground since it's too young and only 2 ft in length. They said that 99% it will die. If it was 3 ft, then it would have been fine. Well, I decided to put her on test this year. We'll see if it will make it in our zone 5a winter. ;) If it doesn't, I'll try again next year.

Anyways, I covered it with R19 insulation. The insulation looks like an R13(on picture) maybe due to the wrapping. Then I also covered it with a trash can where the bottom also has an R19. Then finally, I put a black trash bag because black absorbs more heat but the truth is, there are tiny holes in the trash can. LOL.

Oh, before I put the insulation, I put thick mulch at the base then also around the trash can after it was covered.

Here she is. That's my son. He likes to join me always when I do something weird. LOL. Hahaha.

{{gwi:422726}}

{{gwi:422727}}

coniferfreak,a half of a 32 gallon trash barrel will have a bigger ground diameter than a five gallon bucket IMHO. The bucket might work for one season. If you protect next season with pups (and you WILL have pups) the five gallon will be too small.

Nucci is right, the trick isn't just covering it to keep moisture off, but also having enough mulch(insulation) where the cold won't be able to penetrate either the pseudostem if that's what you're trying to save, or the corm in the ground. A 5 gallon bucket won't offer enough room for enough insulation to keep the cold from penetrating, while a large trash can will offer at least a foot if not more of insulation on either side of the pseudostem. Some people suggest building a leaf cage as wide as 3 feet across, but I'm not that die-hard LOL.

I've had my basjoos come back every year since 2004. Like most of you I've built cages and fill it with straw. Some years I manage to save some of the psuedostem and other years it just dies to the ground. The best location in my opinion if you are located in a zone 6/5 is to plant it up against the foundation with a southern exposure. Also I use copper fungicide to help with the rot and decay which likely kills most basjoos. I don't think it is the cold so much because it can get quite cold here for extended periods of time.

daryljurassic...I have my Musa caged up like in your photos. We have our 1st freeze coming in a couple days. When you filled up your cage did you leave the plant standing or do you cut it down to the level of the mulch? Should I do this before the first freeze or right after? I noticed you didn't cover with a tarp or plastic. Wouldn't that let the rain or snow in and freeze? Thanks for any help

tropicalintoronto,

I'm worried. My basjoo is planted in northern side. It doesn't get any sunlight anymore.

v1rtu0s1ty,

With it being planted in the north side, I would probably cut it to the ground and mulch like crazy. By cutting it to ground you will likely have less possibility of rot. You may want to spray it with copper fungicide for added protection.

Phil

I decided that if it doesn't make it. I'll just try again next year.

Thanks!

If it does then you know you have one hardy plant.

v1rtuOs1ty(wow,thats a tough one)How did it grow on the north side of your house?

hey nucci60, sorry for the delayed response. From June to September, it did get sunlight after 1pm. If you look at my post above, I said "It doesn't get any sunlight anymore."

I will check later if the trash can still gets sunlight. Last time I checked it, it didn't but I don't recall if it was cloudy that day. :D Today, it's sunny.

Confirmed. Even around 4pm, the sunlight was 10 to 15 ft away. Hopefully, since the corm will be 99% dry due to the 12" deep bucket I put, it will not rot. I will let you know next year. :)