PUPS! What do I do?
 

As a dog trainer, I'm not used to the "no fur" kind.

I've got a GranNain at 24" with 8+1 leaves on it. It now has a pup that has shot out from the base to a whopping 6" in just this week, with a second pup just breaking the soil line, and possibly a THIRD one - which is just a white bump at the base about an inch below the soil line.


:confused:So now that I see these guys coming on... Do I prune them off? Do I let them be? Keep the first but stop the rest?

I have a 18" pot in a south facing window. No spec lighting.
Temp: 75
Humidity: Med-High (Humidifier on all day while at work, windows are literally wet from condensation when I get home)
Soil: Perlite mix. Watering light every 3-4wks with double fertilizer.

:confused:I am worried about it being pot-bound. How do I tell if I need to upgrade, and if so, how big?

My plans are to: Grow it to full size, maybe indoors, and get it to fruit. I don't know much of anything about the life cycle of MusaGranNain and have just been caring for it out of pure excitement - with little to no knowledge about them.

:confused:Honestly, I don't even know how long the plant will live, if it dies after fruiting, and if there is anything i'm doing wrong.

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

I'd let the pups get bigger then separate them for more plants !
:woohoonaner:

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

So will they deprive the mother plant of growing speed?

Is there overcrowding?

How long until the mother plant fruits?

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Leave the pups or take them off .Won't amount to a hill of beans one way or another.:woohoonaner:

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

They won't deprive mother from anything and its actually better to have 1-2 pups connected to the motherplant as they share nutrients and energy produced plus the mat then has double the transpiration of just a single motherplant growing and produce more roots,decreasing the chance of root rot from the mix staying too wet for too long as they will be drying it faster. A mat is also more difficult to rot whole so you have better chances of being able to salvage something if you grow if problems arise. Plus,when the motherplant does eventually fruit,the pups will help the bananas mature if something happens to the motherplant's leafs and when it finishes ripening them,you have a ready and big follower ready which will make use of all the stored energy and nutrients in the motherplant and grow and fruit super fast compared to it! So leaving 1-2 pups is a win-win situation,it just requires you to keep them in a pot big enough to accommodate all corms and have a little room to spare.

All that said however,your banana is too small to pup normally and pups at this small age would result at plants of about the same size all eventually flowering together which isn't ideal for your situation. So I would remove the vigorously growing pups now or,if you want to keep them or give them away,once they have a decent but not too big corm,and keep it pup free till its 1-1,5m tall and then let the deepest growing pup that will be produced grow and become the follower. Latter,when that pup becomes 1-1,5m tall,you can leave one of the pups it produces and that will give you a nice,manageable mat of 3 plants that will fruit successively with not too much time between them.

Happy growing! Indoor banana growing certainly is more challenging than outdoors in a warm place! :)

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Keep it simple.Not all that complicated.

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Propogating pups from a pot isn't hard once they are big enough to do so... :^)

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

What do you do? Build up excitement that you've got some nice multiple pups there and then when they're 2 feet tall min, decide if you want to separate them, chop them, or keep them. I prefer keeping them unless I want to sell or trade or give them away. Pups growing as a "mat" with their mother plant are perfectly fine and take up much less space than having them separately growing nearby. Plus with some varieties it's a bonus. For example, the "Double" banana only produces twice the bunches when the pups are still connected as second gen plants with their mother.

Edited to add, didn't notice the pot issue. I'd separate them in this case, but it doesn't hurt to wait a while before doing so. You want them big enough to take the transfer well.

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Just means the plant is happy. I vote to just leave 'em be....they're not harming anything or draining the main plant of nutrients. They are all connected underground which is dissimilar to normal plant-plant competition. It's just a multi-stem single plant, essentially.

And just to clarify something you wrote in the first post...the plant does not die after it gets done fruiting. That pseudostem will die back, yes, but the plant as a whole (corm and pups) will continue to keep growing to produce subsequent bunches of fruit.

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Wow guys, thank you for all the help. You all make this much more exciting as well as calming my nerves as to realizing these things would do just as well without me in nature somewhere.

I have a 24" pot that is 16gal/60litre. I was thinking about repotting in that. I know some plants prefer to be somewhat snug and a little potbound, and others need room to spread their roots. What do bananas like for relative pot size?

Can anyone enlighten me with a timeline for these guys.
I've read so many DIFFERENT things online and all of them claim to be GranNain info. I realize there are different factors such as storing for winter, cutting back, and fertilizing; but what should I expect for growth, pups, and fruiting with what I'm doing?

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

My gran nain is doing the same thing! pups, pups and more pups! I'm letting them grow tall and then I'll separate them.

Re: PUPS! What do I do?
 

Excited,

If it's not too late, a few questions for you:

Long term, what would you like to do? Would you like to have multiple banana plants? Would you like to maintain a small stand of them?

If it's a potted plant in a window, your current 18" should be fine for a pupping nain. 24" certainly can't hurt if you're interested in a tiny forest in the short term.

Long term, you'll want to separate your plants and keep them all, supposing you have room. In the mean time, 18" won't be too tight, but once your mother plant has 4' or more on it, you'll want to consider separating the pups once they're about half the size of the mother.

Admittedly, I'm not speaking from a lot of experience, but knowing a little about corms and root tendencies makes the situation a bit easier to offer advice.