Originally Posted by browndrake

Thanks for the responses.

For now, my winter plans are to bring them inside the house (first year). I hope to have a greenhouse before winter 2010 (but may be another year later).

From where I sit, this year's winter is the most important one....I have 16 months to learn more and prepare for the next one. Frank's thread on wintering was interesting opened my eyes to other avenues that may be needed.

Logge's Dwarf Ladyfinger is 'cute.' I think that my wife will really like that for inside. Will it put on fruit inside? Will light be the most critical factor for that? She has two corners she wants them in. One of the corners she wants to put a nana in, has no window directly next to it. The other has both a south and west facing windows...so it would have plenty of light? My concern for it (I don't know if it is a valid concern) is that there is a woodburning stove not far away, that we use for our principal method of heating. Would the heat from the stove be detrimental to the plant? The corner will often be +-80 deg F.
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When it comes to cold..what is more important, the ambient temp? or the ground temp? or both equally important? An idea which I have been toying with is leaving bananas in the ground and heating the ground around/under the plants..and mulching on top.

Down the road, I will be putting in a high efficiency wood burning a boiler for heating. It would be a simple thing to run a couple loops to the bananas. I don't know if this has been done by anybody before or not. It wouldn't really cost me any more than the extra lines to do it, maybe a small amount of extra wood per year. I just don't have a clue how it would work for them. I guess it does not matter now as it will come to fruition in about the same timeframe as the greenhouse.
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So, would people agree that it is not too late to get some started this year? and keep some in the ground until we get close to frost season?

Thanks

aaron