Hi banana friends —
This is my first post here, but I have often read posts via Google over the last year since I started playing around with growing banana plants in the Boston area.
I have a current crisis, though. Earlier this year, I bought a basjoo, hoping to eventually plant it in the ground in my parents' house. It arrived healthy and happy from Logees, about a foot tall with four or five leaves, and for February, I kept it in its original pot in a sunny windowsill.
In March, I got cocky, and when I moved my snow peas outside in a 5 gallon bucket, I moved the basjoo outside in one too, reasoning that it was cold hardy, and I would only bring it inside for a frost, like the peas. I also planted it in a conventional potting mix, not the succulent/cactus mix that my first plant (a blue java) has been so happy in.
Within a week or two, it began showing brown around the leaves, and started to wilt. I moved it back inside, originally in the potting mix and, a week or two later, into the succulent mix. I kept it in a sunny window. The brown/wilt continued, however. I tried to trim off the damaged parts of the leaves, hoping it would arrest the damage (rot?), but to no avail.
Now, all I have is one mostly rotted/brown/crinkled leaf, and even the rising leaf has browned all the way down, with no sign of another one behind it (though I might be able to feel it if I squeeze the rising leaf).
Here is my question: is there any hope of this banana recovering as-is? Or, is my best shot to cut it down to the bottom of the stalk, and hope the corm generates an entirely new pseudostem? Alternatively, is this just so sick/dead that there's really nothing more of worth I'm putting into it at this point?
Appreciate any advice you all can provide. p.s., the small thing that looks like a clover near the base of the stalk is a jade leaf that fell off a nearby plant and I was leaving it there to see if it sprouted roots.
