Longwoods Tropicals

Two weeks back after an epic rain event, I pulled my twin red Ventricosums.


The base of the plants had grown from 4 inches to over a foot, the leaves are nearly 6 feet and 16 inches plus across. I put them in 26 inch pots and dragged them into my North West facing sunroom. There they will live with other assorted palms and nanners for the winter.


Of course I'm already planning next year, I will have to give a lot of thought to how I arrange all of these giants next year in my yard, it is easy to over crowd things and bugger up proportionality.

Regards

sal

WOW! They look great! I am thinking next spring I am going to buy one. I like the red/green color they grow.

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Longwoods Tropicals

Here they are a patiently waiting for spring.
My Glaucums
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A SDC
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And some regular Cavendish
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They have all grown substantially, the big Ensetes are nearly touching the ceiling.

Regards

Harold

stevelau1911

Is it better to keep them growing through the winter?

I just don't have the space or lighting for massive banana plants so I decided to force mine into dormancy to store them through winter so they can wake back up in another 6 months.

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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/

Longwoods Tropicals

Thanks Steve for posting those photos. I had planned initially to go the dormant storage route, but lacking an adequate cool storage space (the well insulated basement is kept at 71 and my sun-room is being heated this winter for the Bananas) it was my only choice if I wanted to see them next year. My goal is to preserve the majority of the roots, and to have them in an active growth state first thing in the spring. Last winter I was able to keep Cavendish growing steadily all winter long, but that was in the house under t5 flourescents it will be considerably cooler out there, which could be a good thing as it should slow down the ensetes growth, no signs of that yet they are still pushing leaves a little fast for my liking as they suck up a lot of volume in a room. I wish I could say I know what I'm doing but really this is a bit of an experiment, If I can manage to keep the temps in the mid fifties to the low sixties in mid winter, and keep the humidity up they should be fine.

I'll be interested in how yours do next spring, please keep us posted.

Regards

Harold

Dalmatiansoap

5ft of clear trunk, zone 9, 3th Winter on its way

tough plant

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stevelau1911

If you have enough light and warmth, I think you could get them even bigger than they are now. If there's not enough light, you could probably hang a t5 light setup on the ceiling to supplement the daylight so that the pseudo-stems stay strong. If you have a scale, you might want to weigh them now, and then again in the spring to see if there is any weight loss.

I do expect mine to weigh in a little bit less when I take them back out of storage, and activate them, but these are from tiny eBay plug plants, so even if they lose 20% in weight, they should still be going into April much stronger than they were this year by next spring.

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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/