marksbananas

My darling giant has awoken after winter and i am after some advice, she has 3 pups of varying sizes. The biggest of which can be seen here I tried last year to seprate the pups, but everytime i did i found that they had no roots of there own, when is the best time as this is growing fairly well and as you can see it is in a barrell and i dont want anything to happen to the mother plant, not having enough space. I want to keep the pups and have a lot of seperate plants at different ages. When would you recommend the pup is seperated to esure a good growth on the pup. Also you can see here that she has the left overs of the winter damaged leaves from last year, would you recommend cutting this of to tidy her up or leave them and let her fdo it her self? i do not want to cause any damagfe to the mother plant as she is doing really well and growing very fast now she is out of winter, not sure if that is due to the barrell used to hold whskey lol. I am grateful of any help or advice. Thank you Mark

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Just Bananas about Bananas

magicgreen

Hi Mark,
I can't offer advice on separating pups because I haven't gotten to that stage yet.
Hopefully by the fall I'll have that adventure.

Anyways......I cut all that stuff off little by little. I just like the more neater look.
I cut off only the dry stuff (the sheath?)I don't think it hurts them to cut it off now.

When I overwintered, I left it on until March. I had started bringing some up from the basement onto the 1st floor, and I couldnt look at that mess!

Hope this helps.

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(Started growing bananas July 2007)
(Zone 6)

Banana Mike

Mark, if you want to keep your barrel going and increase the number of plants you have growing in other spots, what I would recommend is to move those new pups out of the barrel.

Don't move a pup unless it's in it's active growth state. Some pups, when they pop up, just sort of sit their. Wait till they are about 2 ft tall then move them. Doing this will ensure that the pup will have it's best chance of survival. Don't worry about the roots when digging it up, the most important thing is to nab part of the parent corm.

Even if you mess it up in a royal way, don't worry. Water it, give it a bit of shade and it will probably grow anyways. So don't be shy. Roots quickly replace themselves.

Lastly, leave one pup, and maybe even later another pup, to take the place of the parent when it does. That will ensure that your barrel will always have a bice banana growing in it.

That's one of the ways they maximize growth at plantations. The pups suck energy from the parent corm. So they're quickly moved away so that the parent can focus on growth and fruiting, leaving one pup to take over later.

Good luck!