hanabananaman

This was my first time growing bananas and after studying weather records I thought there was a 50-50 chance of nothing worse than 28F for a night or 2 now and then. Last winter wasnt that bad at all. Well the Phoenix area had the coldest winter in decades, I beat 28 a few nights early on but 25 for several nights was too much. I easily beat 28 with dozens of various size water containers and some propane heaters. I had minor damage on a couple leaves of 7ftpstem plants. I had some christmas lights on for many nights before the bad cold torched them, I had forgotten about a warning I read awhile back that said light heat would damage anyplace that got too hot. Well about the time the leaves were falling all over frozen I saw the heat damage. With more cold weather coming I machetied the leaves but left some stems long enough to hang lights on over the thick layer of blankets and other cloth that wrapped the stem. The lights were then strung from the stems, chop a small notch in the top of the stem if you need to keep the lights away from the p-stem. If its not going to get too cold I won't cover the lights with more cloth. The big lights put out alot of heat. The places that were damaged caused me to chop 4ft off my 7ft Blue Java (I hope), and I did a little surgery on the mushy spots and they have sealed up nicely. I have a nice pup on each damaged plant if (when) they fall over or split down the side. I will staking them early. They have each pushed a new leaf but tonight its already 37F in my yard at 7pm, not good. I will wrap them now and hang the lights once again. Any advice or suggestions are welcome I always want good advice and don't know for sure what I'm doing all the time.
Hope someone benefits from my experience
Thanks
Larry