jake the snake

Hey everybody. Great site. This is my first year growing tropicals/bananas and I'm hooked. I'm mostly interested in winter hardy bananas for zone 7a but I do have a little room in my garage for some winter storage.

I picked up 4 Musa basjoo's ("hardy fiber banana"), and 2 Red Abyssinian banana's about a month ago. The basjoo's are currently in 22" pots and the reds are in 22" pots. All the pots have three 1/4" holes drilled in the bottom with a layer of 3/4" stone (just enough to cover the bottom of the pot). I used miracle gro potting soil, they are in full sun, and I water them daily unless we get rain (which is rare beings we are in the middle of a bad drought). The reds are doing excellent, great colors, growing quickly, and a new leaf fully unrolls every week. The bajoo's have some brown in them but they still are producing a new leaf every week and are rapidly producing pups.
1) As you can see in my pics, my basjoo's have a lot of fiber material on their trunks. Is this typical? I haven't found any pictures that show similar amounts especially for bananas of this size. The tags read Hardy Fiber Banana (Monrovia) I didn't know if this is some sub-species or different type of basjoo?
2) The brown damage pictured below... I think the minor browning could just be from transplanting and getting used to being outside in full sun?? They were in a green house at the nursery. The full on leaf brown, I think is from excessive heat. We have had 3 days of temps in the low 100's and that seemed to do the damage even though I watered both before work and in the evening. Does this sound typical? Should I remove the bad leaves or just let them be?
3) I have about 15 or so pups in various sizes. When is a good time to remove them and re-plant? How big do they need to be? As pictured, some of the very small pups are coming right off the base of the mother above ground. Can these be removed at the same time/fashion?
4) For my zone ,7a, when is the latest I can plant these and be safe for the winter?

I tried to upload the pictures to my photo gallery as instructed but couldnt get it to work. I was able to attach them though. Thanks guys

Attached Images

	brown leaf.jpg (746.9 KB, 19 views)
	brown leaf2.jpg (1.20 MB, 15 views)
	brown leaf3.jpg (1.09 MB, 11 views)
	fiber trunk pups.jpg (1.52 MB, 22 views)

H2O

Hi & welcome !

Sunburns are typical for basjoo from greenhouse, give them some shade.

For pups removal, you have to wait they are big enough and have enough root system.
See Time to separate the pups for the Spring

Fiber material on the stem, normal.

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