musas in wva

I am sharing this information because several months ago I tried to find information about pruning bananas and could not find it. I am not talking about digging out pups, but truly pruning out the height of a banana "tree"!

We are in West Virginia and have a conservatory with 11 varieties of bananas. When planting, we followed the expertise in books (espe Mr. Stokes) about the various average heights and tried to plant accordingly. Trouble is, 75 percent of them have turned out taller then the averages, even thought they are not leggy.

SO I have several trees pushing out against the ceiling of the polycarbonate, and the leaves don't like it one bit. I noticed that the base of a few of the trees was starting to thicken out a great deal, and suspecting that they were about to fruit, I trimmed out the top leaves, literally cutting the crown back a foot or so, and leaving plenty of leaves for energy.

Well, it appears to be working. Our gran nain is putting out a large stem that already has 10 hands of fruit!!! After the pruning, it had put out another two leaves and the WOW - there are fruit.

Hopefully, we will have the same success with the Namwah and the Pisang Ceylon. I also had to cut back a Hua Moa, even though it is not thickening yet. It is already about 14 feet at the crown.

If anyone has some advice, I would be very grateful!

MediaHound

If you cut them back after the bloom starts to move up the pseudostem, and below the bloom itself, kiss that pseudostem goodbye! The farther down you cut, the bigger the chances are you'll behead it.

Gotta do what you gotta do, though!

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Bob

Thanks for posting this. Let us know how it turns out.

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Chironex

I WISH that I had such problems!

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Scot

Worm_Farmer

Do you mean just cutting the leafs back? I have been keeping between 10 - 12 leafs on my tree. Once it push's out 14 - 16 leafs I cut back all the lower smaller leafs keeping the top full. As the banana gets taller and wider at the bottom the old steams will push off the bottom and turn brown, I cut this part back all the way to the bottom, but not till it turns brown. Is this ok? My tree seems nice a strong. Is there a magic number of how many leafs I should keep on the tree?

musas in wva

No- I have been cutting out the newest growth because the plants are getting too tall. Very carefully, I cut out a leaf at a time so that I don't cut a bloom if it is coming up. I do not cut the lower leaves at all. I have read that a tree needs nine leaves in oder to have the energy to bloom and produce nanners, so I cut out as few of the crown as possible. My problem is that the crown of many of the trees is either near the ceiling or at it and if a stem comes out it has no room to come out. Its not as pretty but I think it is the only alternative I have. If anyone else has advice I'd be very grateful.