hello, Im in winnipeg canada and grow all sorts of large bananas. I think the key is being able to bring them indoors to look after when the cold months are here. I have a couple 6-7 foot cavendish and others around the 5-8 foot mark. The biggest challenge I find is keeping the spider mites at bay and putting up with some ratty looking leaves until spring. But come summertime all the effort pays off.

How do you go about taking them in for the winter? Do you dig up and pot whole plant, or chop down and keep dormant?

I try to keep as many as I can growing in pots. They grow very slow , but do grow some. The ones I let go dormant I havent had a great lot of success with yet. This spring will be a better indicator, but so far I have lost a couple of the dormant pseudos... corm may still be okay, although a couple seem to have started to rot inspite of not getting any water. Time will tell. I think the bigger the plant when you put it into dormancy... the better the chance of it surviving until spring.

I'm in a similar situation trying to overwinter a musa esete. There's lots of information on storing the plants in a dark cool spot, but I didn't have such a spot so I am keeping my plant as a houseplant in a pot.

My plant was growing in a fairly big pot on the deck so I just moved that inside for winter. So far I haven't really provided it with a lot of water, and I did spray the leaves once with neem oil mixture just as a precaution against spider mites. I think my plant's grown one leaf since October.

It really doesn't get sun but is in front of a moderately bright north window.

I also bought an air reflector for the floor heating vent nearby, so that the warm dry air doesn't blow directly on the plant. In the past, when overwintering plants, I found that plants in the direct line of air from the heating vents were the first to get spider mites in winter.

I desparately hope mine survives as I read they grow bigger and better each year, as opposed to having to start them from seedlings each year.

Glen

Mike, do you have a cool/cold basement or garage that doesn't freeze? Those would probably be the best locations for banana storage for northern growers. Second best would be an unheated bedroom. Some folks store them bareroot in a frostless crawl space (might not work for all varieties). Lastly a well-lit heated room, but you'll probably have to battle spider mites most of the winter. Of course the absolute best location would be a warm, humid greenhouse where you can keep them growing vigorously year-round! So it all depends on the your own situation and space availability.

Here's what I do.

Dig plants in Fall before frost. Trim off most of the lower leaves (I left maybe three). Knock off as much garden soil as you can. Repot in as small a pot as possible (within reason). Add barely moist potting soil. Keep the plant in shade if weather is warm. Don't water much at all. I'm overwintering mine in a garage where I'm maintaining the temp at 40 - 50 degrees F. Hardly any water. I water enough to prevent the root ball from shrinking. The plants get some very dim light from a window across the room. They're looking very good right now. No mite problems -- probably because the temp is too cool for their liking. They've slowed down growth significantly. They'll speed up growth as days get longer -- in March or April. At that time I'll slowly increase watering. Sometimes I dig down in the soil to see if new roots are forming. If so, defininately increase water. Set outside when nights are above 50 degrees F.

With this technique I've successfuly wintered over basjoos, Raja puri, Brazilian Tall, Dwarf Cav, M. velutina, Super Dwarf Cav, and Rojo. I think it should work for most any banana. Some may be more difficult than others.

I've even stored unpotted bareroot pseudostems for a while -- and didn't pot them up for several weeks. Here are some I prepared for mailing out.

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