cranemit

I've been growing bananas for about 5 years and have only had occasional problems with trees getting blown over, and that's typically been due to strong wind. This season, I've had several tipping over kind of randomly. A few have been plants growing fruit, and just started to bend below where the fruit was growing out, and for those I was typically able to support them and buy them a few more weeks until they were ready to be harvested.

But recently some of them have started to tip over basically from the roots. I'll add replies in a few minutes with pictures to show a little bit more detail in case it helps. Just trying to figure out what I can do to help limit or prevent this.

One of the mats is Mysore, and I originally planted in that spot about 5 years ago. A few weeks ago, I noticed two of them had completely fallen over, roots and all. There are still a few others growing in that mat and I started to notice them leaning, and when I pushed one, it seemed pretty loose and felt like it would eventually tip over. I figured it's better to just lose that one plant and leave the other smaller ones growing, and thought maybe if it had to do with the overall weight, that might help a little. So I've chopped the taller trees there but it still does feel like the base is a bit loose.

Today I noticed a Sweetheart had tipped over as well. I haven't done anything with it yet, and I didn't notice the others in that mat appearing to be loose or anything. But the roots where it came out felt pretty dry underneath.

I'm in South Florida, in zone 10. This time of year we get pretty sporadic heavy rainfalls, but if there's nothing for 2 or 3 days I'll run the sprinklers. I fertilize every month, put plenty of compost on there, and cut up the trees that have been harvested and scatter them around the base of the others.

I can't tell if this is a matter of it being under- or over-watered, or just something else with the soil. When I cut up the "logs" of the dead trees, I'll leave them in chunks a few feet long and put them over the roots of other banana trees, letting them eventually decompose. I've tried doing this a bit more around the mats where I've seen plants tipping, hoping a little more weight might help keep the roots in place, but maybe it's having the opposite effect.

Would appreciate any advice people have. Overall it's been a very fruitful summer, but I do try to have enough fruit in the pipeline so over the winter when the fruiting slows down, that we still have enough to last us. I'm the type of person who gets sad seeing mango blossoms fall to the ground, knowing that it's one less mango that someone will get to enjoy, so having to cut down a tree, with or without fruit growing on it, is never an easy thing to do!