preventing corm spreading
 

hello, my neighbor recently told me about a way to prevent the corm/roots of the banana plant from spreading to large... this prevents you from having a huge banana patch. he said when you dig your hole, to line the borders with a burlap bag with metal buttons on it. when the roots grow and touch the buttons, they should retract and not spread outwards too much.
has anyone heard of this or is currently doing this?
i plan to plant my bananas in the ground soon and wnat to know if it's worth trying out.

thanks everyone!
dean

Re: preventing corm spreading
 

I think its just the burlap. They bundle roots on palms, and other plants and it contains the roots. I don't think the metal bottons do anything other than hold sections of burlap together. This may limit the size of the corm eventually, the nutrients the plant gets over time, and limiting production you may get.

Re: preventing corm spreading
 

You can also buy root barrier, a material specifically made for that purpose. It is commonly used for plants like bamboo that spread rapidly from root systems.

Re: preventing corm spreading
 

Sounds totally silly to me. The roots and corm are completely different structures, so inhibiting the roots from spreading is not going to stop the corms from spreading. If you notice bananas growing in pots for a very long time, the pots will eventually be split apart by the growing corms.

About the roots touching a metal button and retracting specifically, when roots come into an obstacle, they dont just give up and die or stop growing or something, they just grow around it and continue on. But there is really no sense in trying to limit the root system in the ground anyway, the bigger the root system the healthier of a mat you will have, so if you wan't it to be confined for some reason, just put it in a large container.

And for keeping the mats small, if you desucker you can keep the mats any size you want. If your concern is just to keep the mats small and not to propagate the plants, you can easily slice off young suckers with a shovel or digging bar to kill them before they get too large, it takes about 5 seconds per sucker. If you want to propagate, then just let a few grow out and carefully dig them out later.

Re: preventing corm spreading
 

Burlap won't last a year in the soil.

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