kaczercat

Hey everyone! Last year I experimented with a caster bean in the ground. It was activly growing and flowering until Dec 31st. This year I am thinking about heating cables. Has anyone used them with bananas and other fruit trees?

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Matt

beam2050

also stabilizes in the wind.

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

Steve L

I've used heating cables occasionally when I am expecting an arctic front and the temps are going to be in the middle 20's at night and not above freezing the next day. Once every 5 or so years. I break all the leaves at the pseudostem and fold them down over the pseudostem, wrap the cable around that, and then wrap all of that in blankets. The only banana I've done this for is my AeAe. They survived 24 that night. I think it helped.

Steve

kaczercat

I will remember to leave the dead leaves on over winter as well. I'm glad it worked! for me the issue is ground freeze. so if I dug a trench around the in ground plants 6 or 7 inches deep and used something like 6 feet of cable. that sounds like it might just do the trick! I have till December until it starts getting cold cold but I will see what the hardware store has tomorrow.

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Matt

Steve L

I got mine at Home Depot and they are actually cables for pipes to and from hot water heaters. They have a thermostat set at about 45. I had to order mine online because I can only remember once in the last 50 years we got cold enough to freeze pipes and the stores don't carry it

JP

Got a friend that wrapped it around a palm tree for winter, a bit north of montreal. He then built a wooden box around it insulated with blue styrofoam. It worked. I'd heat the greenhouse though...

kaczercat

it's a lot of work! props to them. I have a needle palm with a foot of trunk just planted pot and all outside and forgot about it haha.
the greenhouse doesn't get much colder then the low 40's

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Matt

Hammocked Banana

I just got my palm enclosures all built last weekend, just waiting for thermocubes and cables to arrive. May put a heat lamp in there to on a lower set point as well just to be sure.

Anyways....here's the thread I saw a while ago that really shows the possibile benefits of burying heating cables. Took me a while to find it but it's a good one. Beautiful yard....

1 Year Basjoo Growth in Mass.

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