scottu

I have a quick question for you guys in the know. How deep do I have to dig the hole for my 3 foot tall musa basjoos considering that I'm digging in dirt with a clay bottom. I intend to line the bottom with small stone and make sure there is run off, so no pooling. I have the hole 2 feet deep and am planning to raise it up another 2ft and plan to leave them in the ground permanently, covering them up for the winter. Do you guys think this is sufficiently deep for them if they get a chance to spawn a mature family of offspring. (if the corm survives several years?)
Thank you much, they are getting planted tomorrow or the next day one way or the other. Gotta make way for the new stuff!

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Viva La Banana

stevelau1911

I only planted my corms a bit more than 1ft deep, but I don't see anything wrong with putting them 2ft deep as long as you don't fill the hole back up with clay soil to cut off any air flow. I think each time they produce pups, they'll get a little bit less deep, and gravitate towards their normal depth so therefore planting them deeper sounds good for colder climates.

It worked well with my 1st attempt to over-winter musa basjoo. Here's a picture of it which is a couple days old. Now it has turned green and rose a few more inches again. So counting the psued-stem underground, 2ft of it survived.

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I'm in zone 6 upstate NY, specialize in growing temperate cold hardy bamboos(mainly phyllostachys) and starting to get into bananas.

my picture website is http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

scottu

Thanks for the imput. I assumed that a foot or two of depth was about right since they are grown in pots all the time but, you never see beds of them in pots and I wasn't sure how that affects the depth of a larger corm/root system especially as they get older.

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Viva La Banana