fisherking73

My Raja puri is finally flowering, just pushed flag leaf out yesterday. I had been meaning to remove some pups earlier and never got around to it. Should I wait until harvest of bananas to do so? or can I safely remove pups now?

JP

Wait!!! It's not the best time to stress the plant!

fisherking73

Its what I figured. And been waiting so long for a flower, and have been meaning to clean up some pups cuz she is cranking them out, just been busy. Can't wait.

Gabe15

Not only will removing the pups now put tremendous stress on the plant and can likely lead to loss of the bunch, but for any action involving benefiting the fruit, especially in regards to increasing the number of fruit, you can't wait until the end to affect any significant change.

You don't have anything to worry about though, just let it do it's thing and you will get what you get.

The plants must be managed well throughout their growth cycle in order to really affect the fruiting. This means adequate water, sun, fertilizer and pruning well before the bunch emerges. The first 3 months of a new shoot's growth is very important, if there is much stress in those first 3 months, it will affect the bunch later on still. Good conditions must also of course be maintained after those first few months until harvest. The actual bunch is initiated and basically done forming at least 3-6months before emerging (in the tropics...likely longer in temperate areas), so anything done as it emerges is really last-minute. You can still affect the fruit growth in some ways, such as with bagging and pruning fruits off etc...but this is more in the realm of preserving fruit quality, not enhancing it. Especially the number of fruits is pretty much set way ahead of time.

I always like to use a Santa Claus-type metaphor: you can't be bad all year and just do good right at the end and expect abundant presents.

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Hammocked Banana

I like that metaphor....

PR-Giants

This is a myth that pops up often, removing the pups now will not stress the plant and will not lead to loss of the bunch.

Here's an easy way to understand this, if the pups were killed by destroying their growing point it would have no effect on the plant or bunch, and removing them is not much different.

Here's a SH-3640 in an 80 gallon pot that had a huge pup removed while it was flagging and the plant will produce a normal bunch as expected. I do this all of time and the only thing different with this situation is that there are many large plants in this pot. The FHIA-21 in the photo is one of two ratoon crop followers of a recently harvested mother plant.

The size of the pup removed was similar to the 2' Manini pup pictured below.

Santa Claus can damage the plant & bunch while parking his sleigh, but he should also have the capability to park his sleigh without damaging the plant & bunch.

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Gabe15

You're right in that if done carefully, and only removing one sucker you won't do much damage to the plant, but the reality is that removing suckers invariably also destroys some roots coming from the mother corm, which is very stressful to that shoot during fruiting as it is not in a vegetative growth stage, and any amount of stress will affect the fruit development to some degree. If you have a lot of experience removing suckers, it can be done with minimal damage, but most people are not that experienced at it and often do a messy job, so as a general guideline I always advise to just wait until the plant is done fruiting unless there is some pressing need to get suckers immediately. Loss of the bunch can come from many different sources, including altering the structural integrity of the root system which is anchoring in the mat in the ground, I have seen cases where too many suckers were removed from a fruiting plant, which damaged a lot of roots in the process and led to the mother plant falling over. The issue isn't whether or not there are suckers present, the issue is damaging roots, and this case, what was suggested was to remove the mat from the pot and separate everything out, which is very different than what you have described, carefully removing a single small sucker.

Also you must consider this not an optimum situation in a tropical environment, bananas in a greenhouse in a less-than ideal environment behave very differently from the tropics, everything is slowed down and they are much more sensitive to stressful situations. I have grown many bananas in both situations for years.

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PR-Giants

Yeah... It was obvious you were wrong from the very beginning.

Your story telling is epic, but I strongly believe that folks deserve to know the truth. Which then gives them the tools needed to make their own decisions.

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PR-Giants

Most folks including the OP know how to remove pups. It's fairly obvious and no experience is necessary. First timers can usually do it as well as anyone else.

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PR-Giants

You really out did yourself here.

Not only did you come up with an imaginary pot for the banana plant but you also built an imaginary greenhouse for it in your story.

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PR-Giants

This was a little more difficult but I'm sure most folks could have figured out how to do it without damaging the fruiting mother plant.

These two medium sized Manini suckers that I removed two days ago had many suckers on both sides and above them. The only way to remove them without damaging the other suckers was to make the cut from beneath them.

When I do this I don't even want to scratch the other suckers, so its difficult to believe that someone needs to cut all the roots to remove suckers.

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PR-Giants

This was simple and anyone should be able to do it.

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JBijl

Damm nice pics i love to have a pup from the pic

meizzwang

Perhaps most professional banana growers can remove pups without damaging the roots on the mother plant, but doing it right takes experience and requires having the right tools. I would gamble to say most amateur growers have neither, which is why recommending them to not dig up pups during flowering is solid advice. call me an idiot, but my claims come from personal experience as an amateur grower.