wheelman1976

As some who have read my threads know I have a bunch of red dwarf and dwarf brazillians that I dug up this fall. I brought them in my basement garage which is unheated and stacked them on a wooden shelf raised four feet off the ground. Long story short, our winter so far has been quite mild and I have not seen temps get down to the 35-45 degrees yet down there. I checked on them today and I'm seeing alot of die off and white fuzzy mold on a lot of the dead material. I cut off the tops of a couple and I see rotting on the outside leaves and and cigar leaves dying back.

Is this normal for winter storage? Do you just live with it and get them back in the ground as quickly as you can in the spring and they come back from there? With as many plants as I have I'd like to minimize die off until I can full move over to more cold hardy varieties.

Any tips on what I can do to help them out? My garage seems to be a bit on the humid side of things, could that be my issue? I keep my canna rhizomes down there and while I see some molding on them, for the most part them come out unscathed in the spring.

blownz281

If it were me I would have collected from lowes or hd the black plastic pots from dead plants. Pot them up and let them be,add a heater as well and not let it get below 40.

wheelman1976

I've got 35 bananas.... that amount of pots and dirt gets pretty pricey (even if you get the pots for free. Plus figuring the heat out, it just isn't in the cards.

I'm wondering if running a dehumidifier would be a good thing down there?

wxman

No ... that will dry them out faster. I store mine in a 55 degree basement in winter and they look fine. Basjoo, orinoco, thai black and ensete maurelii. I will plant them in pots and put them in the greenhouse around March 1st.

Do you have a greenhouse?

wheelman1976

No greenhouse for me unfortunately.

I moved them into my basement furnace room. It's around 50-60 in there so hopefully they'll slow down their withering. Told the wife not to go in the back room until spring.

I was mistaken in thinking that as long as they didn't freeze that it didn't matter how cold it got for them. Now I know to keep in a semi heated area.

I'm going to slowly move to basjoos as time permits anyways so my goal is to keep em in the ground and minimize my workload in the fall.