Seeking advice on dwarf Namwah
I知 seeking advice from experienced banana growers on what I should do with my dwarf namwah. I received it in early June 2022 when the pseudo-stem was about 16 inches tall. I put it in the ground in full sun shortly after receiving it. My hope was that it would grow substantially over the course of the next 3-4 months. Grow it has, but not to the degree I expected. The p-stem is about 18-19 inches tall and not much thicker than it was when I first planted it. I understand that the plant still has a young corm and will probably grow a lot more vigorously after its first full year in the ground.
My question is this: what should I do to protect my plant during the winter? I live in Tampa, FL zone 9b. I知 confident the corm would survive if I did nothing, considering the Namwah is decently cold-hardy. I知 also pretty sure that a Namwah with a thick p-stem would have no problems surviving a typically winter in my zone. But because the p-stem is still pretty small, I知 afraid that I値l lose it to a freeze and have to start over from the ground again in the spring. The plant is still small enough where I could dig it up and put in a pot to keep indoors over the winter. Alternatively I could leave it in the ground and insulate it with hay/straw/frost cloth or other means of trapping heat and shielding it from cold winds.
What would you do in my situation?
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