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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Not even close. It is like saying that a salamander is equivalent of a crocodile.
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Ramanon,
Where's your sense of creativity? This is an an awesome project for those engineers among us that also like plants. Have you ever built a plant stand or lean-to greenhouse or anything? It's done for the challenge, fun and sense of accomplishment. I like it! |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
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Wasn't trying to insult, just didn't get it. Insulation factor from styrofoam? |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Okay, Ramanon, no insult taken.
Here are however a few figures which might help point out the difference between my shelter and a contractor's vinyl bag: Okay, Styrofoam (polystyrene), one inch thick has an r-value of 4. Two layers of that in my shelters have an r-value of 8. Add to that the glass fibre filler I intent to add in fall, with a nominal r-value of 9 for the three inches and you get a total of 17. Admittedly stuffing glass fibre between the polystyrene layers will not quite achieve that, so let us assume a final r-value of 15 total. That would be the equivalent of a twelve inch stack of plywood. Since frost here only goes a few inches deep at most, I consider my shelter sufficient in keeping the content frost free. :) Certainly it will be superior to the leaf mulch I have employed successfully in past winters, especially since the pyramid shape is relatively open to the warm soil below. Oh yes, you need a concrete wall of more than 7.5 feet thickness to achieve r = 15 :ha: Note: r = resistance to temperature penetration. |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Interesting design, I look forward to seeing your results this winter. Do you have space at the bottom for lights on a Thermo cube if necessary?
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
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In the tropics concrete walls and roofs are nice, cool during the day, warm and cozy at night. :waving: |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
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and should keep the temperature well above freezing. For the Maurelii I have devised a “passive heating system” – just a fancy name for permitting warmer air from the lower strata to rise up into the shelter. The permanent temperature “down there” is about 8^C in our region. I am trying to tap into that. I will write more about that, when I have some results on my ”non-destructive propagation experiment”, as the installation of the heating duct ties into that. |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Any ideas that will produce the desired result of successfully overwintering bananas in temperate climates immediately catch my interest. I think your intention to tap into the temperature of the earth has significant merit. I've previously posted picture of a simple device I've used to kickstart my plants in the spring, using otherwise discarded nursery pots. Going further with your idea, I might hammer two or three lengths of metal conduit into the soil inside the walls of my towers to tap into that latent heat. Additional to the whole conversation......there is no such thing as cold, per se, rather, the abscence of heat (sometimes a great abscence to be sure , lol), so the idea of insulation only has merit if trying to keep heat in, it will have less importance to keeping cold out (effective sealing is the trick here). So, maintaining and keeping a source of heat inside the enclosure certainly makes a lot of sense. Keep thinking, experimenting and sharing. We're all in this together..................:bed:
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Hi Rik,
it is good to see, that somebody is still looking at this. It is even better if he picks it up and expands on it :) Your idea of hammering metal conduits may have merit, but won’t work for me. Our property is located on an old riverbed from the time, when the Thompson River was still flowing through the Okanagan into the Columbia, instead of the Frazer. That means, once you go 2 to 4 feet down, you hit river-run boulders. They would stop any metal rod dead. :( That little shelter has other advantages, I had originally not thought of, but later mentioned in other threads: Typically it is considered save in our area to plant tomatoes (and with that bananas) outside around May 15. With some reliance on weather forecasts I usually do that sometime between May 5 & 10. That misses a lot of nice, warm days in March and April. With this shelter I can even start the uncovering in February for a few days and more in March and April. It is easy to put the lid back on in seconds when frost threatens. And because the PS will hopefully start growing during that time and poke over the top, you can just place first a bucket and later a tomato cage upside-down on top and hang an old quilt or blanket over it. Any frost during that time will be short and light. Thus you might gain a month or more growing season. Daylight hours and light conditions are in late March similar to mid September. That is not so easy to do with leaf mulch or stacked hay/straw bales. I have now packed all my bananas away, that last one 3 days ago, and am anxiously looking forward to how that will all play out in spring. On a different note, in a previous post (Two of my posts down)I stated: Quote:
R-value of 12 and after installing it I feel confident, that it filled in well enough to retain that R-value fully. Overkill? – Probably :) Best, Olaf |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
I think that is one of the more interesting parts of this site, in that everyone's situation, challenges and solutions can be very different. Occasionally there is a nugget of useful information that comes along that addresses many problems. For instance, I am essentially frost free most years, but have to give serious consideration to keeping dormant plants from excessive moisture and resulting rot here on Vancouver Island. But often the solutions are not too far removed from someone dealing with cold and snow for example. My Ensete A has gotten too big for overwintering in my workshop as it has for the last two years (cool, barely heated, dim light most of the time), so I'm interested in your successes this winter. I will definitely follow your progress. Thanks again!:08:
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Hi Rik,
since you appear to be open to experimentation, here is a quote from a post from another thread on ‘bananas.org’ on a different subject: Quote:
for survival outdoors in your area. The trick is to have not just one or two keepers, but a few extras to experiment with. Thus if the cold hardiness claims are exaggerated and you lose one outdoors you still have not lost all. The reason, why I am approaching you now and not wait until I return with them is, that they have to be sown almost immediately after they leave the fruit. In other words I would have to send them to you right after my return and you would also have to soak them right away and subsequently get them into the soil quickly. Thus look through the thread in the quote and, if interested, send me your mailing address before x-mas. Best, Olaf |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Olaf, your follow up almost made me laugh out loud, as just last week I purchased a Kumquat from a local nursery at a very good discount. So, there is already a bit of an interest in citrus going on here! I had some sort of orange as a houseplant years ago, but haven't had anything of the sort since. The flowers and scent of citrus imitators (mexican orange and mock orange) are a component of my summer garden, and the kumquat is right on the edge for outdoor survival here. As such, I am toying with the idea of finding a choice spot for it. One bad winter could end that dream however, so for the present, it will grace a choice spot near the patio doors. Past attempts at citrus from seed have been hit and miss, and I don't recall any getting more than a foot or two tall before succumbing. But much more thought and investigation required before I go that route. But, oh the realities we create in the dark recesses of our fertile minds! More to follow, I'm sure!:2738:
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Well, you can take your time looking through that thread. There are still almost 6 weeks ‘til
Christmas to make up your mind. :) Olaf |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
very nice i will look into building t his type of structure. Looks a heck of alot better then just mulch.
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Now, that all my shelters have been opened up, I think it is a good time to assess their
performance; Shelter #1, which housed the E. Maurelii was a bomb. That plant was clearly dead, and it now looks as if there won’t be any pups from the stump either. It is not entirely clear, what killed it. It could have been the cold or it could have been, that it was kept in complete darkness for almost 6 months. Unfortunately I had only one min/max thermometer, when I put those bananas to sleep last fall and I used that for monitoring the cold hardiness of a quat and an oleander in our neighbour’s sunroom. The quat (rated hardy to -10^C) survived the min. temperature in the sunroom of -8^C without blinking, while the oleander succumbed. Accordingly I have no idea, how cold it got inside the shelter during the winter. ________________________________________________________________ __ The second shelter housed a basjoo, which suffered greatly during dormancy, but I have reason to believe, that it was not necessarily due to frost. If you look at the picture below, you will be able to see, that there was a mysterious kind of rot going down near the centre of the PS. Frost would have presumably killed the PS from the outside in. This rot happened to develop in the centre of the PS.  In the above picture you see the remaining stump of the PS in the centre, while I arraigned the slices as I have cut them off from the top, starting from the top left clockwise. The stump now shows some sign of growth (only ¼ inch so far), but it will clearly survive. ________________________________________________________________ __ The third shelter, the big one in the family of three, housing my main pad of basjoo, was obviously a success. You can clearly see in the below photo, that new growth started, right where I sliced the PSs off in fall. There was no freeze-back as those same plants have suffered in previous winters.  To the left you can see one of the 4 min/max thermometers, which I am now using to monitor the overnight temps and which I will enclose with the stumps next winter, to see how cold it gets inside the shelter during the winter. |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
I'm following your experience with your shelters with great attention, even if I don't reply. I'm wondering if they can be adapted/used to help those of use who are willing to try the growth of edible cultivars on a less than ideal environment.
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Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Hi Pancrazio (do you have a first name or something more convenient to call you by?),
I cannot say anything about your edible cultivars, because I don’t know anything about them and how they would be able to take the lack of light. You would have to figure that for yourself, but in HZ 8b to 9 you should not have to deal with severe frost, and a shelter like this one might not be necessary. Just build a scaffolding like the one shown here: You can easily assemble it with ¾ inch irrigation pipe. Just stick it together and when you no longer need it, take it apart and bundle the pieces for easy storage. You can cover it with polyethylene sheeting and when cold nights are forecast toss an old quilt over it (can you spell Sally Ann?). On very cold nights you can augment that with a string of (outdoor) x-mas lights or similar and on borderline nights you can toss a 1 gallon milk jug filled with hot water in it. That will give you more room than my banana shelters, lets light in, when the quilt is not applied and should do with most of your plants. Just make sure, that you will include some sort of a gable, for a flat roof will let rain water pool and make a mess of it. Good luck, Olaf |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Hi there Olaf,
You can call me Pan, my Italian name would sound exotic and hard-to-remember anyway. :) Although I live in what is basically considerable by a Z8-9 by the average minimum temperature of the coldest nights, what i see around me tells another story. We, in fact, have cold and damp winter, and while they don't have any "spike cold" as some people experience in SC or in KY they don't get much sun either, and temperature, even if don't get very cold, stay relatively cold for months (it's almost impossible to have anything hotter than 55-60F between December and March). So our local flora doesn't even remember the one you can see in z9 if you go in florida for istance: too much wetness, which doesn't goes well with bananas and other stuff. Maybe a good approximation of my winter can be Vancouver or Virginia Beach. To help with this, since it is almost impossible to get a drier environment, i was thinking about raising the temperatures which may help the bananas during the winter months. I must admit that i haven't tried any "outside overwintering" yet so i don't know how they would react to the climate but as i can tell by people from california, i suppose that banana wouldn't like to have cold wet feet for several months in a row. |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
Hi Pan,
I cannot see how moisture or wetness in you region can be a detriment to outside wintering. Bananas like humidity and wet “feet” have never bothered them, although during the winter dormant period, you may want to prevent them from getting too soggy. See: http://www.bananas.org/f10/what-root-rot-19716.html The shelter I proposed here will do that, but is probably not be necessary in your climate If you want to use just leaf mulch just place a “skirt” of plastic sheeting over top of your mulch, sloping away from the base of the plant. There is a lot of advice available in the “Cold hardy bananas” forum. Good luck, Olaf |
Re: Permanent banana shelter for winter and spring
I agree with you bananas love to stay wet, the problem is, that when they get most water (in winter) they are already stressed and unable to resist to disease using the method that bananas use against most soil parasitic disease: growing over it.
I have tried three times with a cavendish to overwinter it in a reasonably dry environment (i mean potted in a unheated greenhouse with the strict amount of water needed to maintain dampness, in a sandy soil) and in every attempt the pstem and the roots rotted without any regard towards my efforts. I think that the problem is: once they are actively growing, no amount of water can damage them: but when dormant, they prefer a drier environment. This seems to keep true for every banana which is very stressed by low temperature. I have found this hardly surprising because it seems pretty much the standard behaviour of every tropical plant i grow. Also my soil has a fair amount of clay and during extendend rainy periods i think my soil can become also depleted in oxigen, i think. Basjoo are everywhere around here and are an exception to this rule. The fact is, basjoos are pretty far from dying when the water falling from the sky is still liquid, so they aren't really stressed by cold rain. However in next years I'll try to experiment with DO and DN to see what happens. So far the Goldfinger i overwintered outside in a dry spot behaved very well. |
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