eric27

I have a few of these I'm leaving out this winter to trial and see how they perform. Two are closer to the house. One is much further away. Bascially in the middle of the yard. That one is about 3.5 feet high to the leaf axis. The two near the house are much smaller. I'm not concerned about them not making it.

All three are Musa yunnanense spp yunnanense. My other one with all the color got pulled and is in the house for the winter.

So for cover the ones next to the house are only getting straw and leaves, and then plastic and burlap over them. The one in the middle of the yard gets more attention. When I planted it is spring I planted it much deeper with the intent of leaving outside over winter. For this one it gets a very heavy much of straw, plastic over the entire mound and burlap over that. It is not covered yet. Next to it is a smallish (got to about 3 feet tall or so and also planted deeper) Colocasia gigantea Thailand Giant Strain that I'm leaving in there under all the mulch. If it doesn't make it that's ok. The huge ones were all pulled.

The other night we hit out lowest temperature so far this year, 25 degrees. The Musa yunnanense next to the house were not really covered and showed no effect at all. The one in the yard had some covering. The leaves and leaf axis was fried. But the 3 or 4 inches of pseudostem that was exposed made it just fine. The Colocasia next to it, just the top that was exposed got hit. The rest is fine. It will be interesting to see how things go once the real cold hits.

Eric

saltydad

Good luck. If you can overwinter them in your climate, I'll definitely breathe more easily.

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eric27

Yeah thanks. I'll be sure to let you know how it goes. I'm using all my tricks the one, since I don't have the heat from the house or any other microclimates, and it is a bit small. But I'm really curious to see how these things do. I'm sure now I just brought on the worst winter in decades doing this!

RobG7aChattTN

Mine didn't do so well for me last winter. It survived a really long, cold winter but really struggled for most of the summer. I had the same problem with my M. velutina. I think maybe they both got some rot on the corm and fought it most of the summer before finally taking off a bit. I just used mulch and not that much of it. Hopefully this winter will be a better one and I already have a good pile of mulch on everything.

eric27

Good luck this winter Rob. Were you able to overwinter any of the pseudostem or did it regrow from the corm? I hope to get a pic or two up in the next couple days just to show how I covered them.

Blake09

If you can....











.

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eric27

I'm working on it. I'm waiting until tomorrow morning when there is actually some light. See above...I hope to have some up in a couple days.

griphuz

Good luck on them Eric,
I intend to leave them outside one day as well.

How do you know by the way that all three are Musa yunnanense spp yunnanense?

Kind regards,
Remko.

RobG7aChattTN

It came up from the corm last winter as well as the winter before. I has never gotten very big (bigger last year than this year). Maybe this year will be different. I really piled the mulch on top this year so maybe the corm will overwinter. So far I've had very little luck getting pseudostems to overwinter except with Basjoo and that was back when I built a big cage around them filled with mulch. I do have a sikkimensis hybrid that does overwinter the smaller pups (if that counts) but never the big pseudostems. They seem to survive the winter but in spring they start to turn brown in the center and rot out.

eric27

Thanks Remko. I'm hoping for the best but expect the worst.

Well all the credit goes to Caloosamusa and Dr Hakkinen. They helped ID the Musa yunnanense for me. Thanks to them I know what they are.

bigdog

This is what my mat of Musa yunnanensis looked like last September. After a very cold winter, which included about 10 days in a row with a high below freezing, this plant never returned this year. It had survived several winters previously, with single digit lows, but I believe that it was the long duration of cold that eventually killed it this past winter. I sure do miss it too! It got bigger every year, and I thought that it might even flower in a couple of years. Oh well...I'll try again someday.

Frank

eric27

Thanks Frank. Did you cover it at all or was it unprotected the last winter when it died?

bigdog

Completely unprotected every year. Next time, I'll be sure to add extra mulch and maybe even some plastic. I hated to lose it!

eric27

Here are the pictures I promised of how I covered it. We were in the low 60s last week so I just finished covering it. If I lose it I lose it. It wasn't a big mat like yours. Just a smallish plant. Yours was really nice though!



The Colocasia Gigantea Thailand Giant Strain that I'm leaving out next to the Musa Yunnanense.


Musa Yunnanense after a low of 25 degrees.


The whole thing. I covered it with more straw and leaves to cover the entire plants.


And burlap over the top, then plastic to keep mositure out. That should also help keep it warmer.

The ones next to the house got a very similar covering, minus the burlap.


Eric