The following is a step-by-step guide to cutting a pup from a mother plant. This method is very quick and easy and I'm sure if you give it a try, you will be much more likely to move pups around, as you'll find it fast and fun. The result will be many more banana plants colonizing your property, much sooner. And you know what that means. So follow along with me as we seperate a Pitogo huli from it's mother...
Tools required - deep scoop, short handle shovel and a sledgehammer (I usually use a much bigger sledge than this though!).
This is where we will be working. This plant has been growing quite slow for me, so I figure if I remove the pup and move it over a bit, the two stalks won't be competing for the limited nutrition in that area where they are together now. I'll also amend the soil before I'm done.
Positioning of the cut. Place your scoop close to the mother plant that will remain. Notice the pseudostem is nested right alongside the handle of the shovel, touching. The handle is also used to fold the leaf away from your line of sight. Now position the angle of your cut by moving the handle where you hold the shovel away from the mother plant. This gives you an angle that will cut a little bit under the mother plant, or at least cut away from the base of the pup, leaving the most valuable corm material to remain on the pup. This step is important! Line everything up properly.
Sink the blade. With one hand, hold the handle of your shovel in place so you do not tip your shovel and hit your head with the handle when you smack the scoop with your sledgehammer. If you do not hold the shovel steady, it may strike your head violently. Holding the handle in place also makes sure you keep the angle you want.
Here you see the blade is sunk almost to it's base. The corm is severed and now we can lift the pup up and away from the mother.
A look down the incision and we can see the umbilical has been cut. This is when you pump the handle to pry the corm and roots up and out of the ground.
A perpendicular cut is made in this case to assist with popping the sucker out of the earth. Don't worry so much about the roots, enough will remain. What we're after is corm, the potato-like white mass under the stalk.
Up, up, and away.
Now we take a break and walk to get some compost. I use and recommend the UCT-9 compost bins manufactured by Urban Garden Center.
I use the lid as a tray to dump some compost on to carry it back to the planting site.
We're back with some compost.
Using your hands, mix the compost with the surrounding soil and press it down into the hole where the pup was. The roots from the mother plant will bury themselves into the compost and the plant will get a boost of energy for some time to come.
After returning from a trip to the compost barrels, we prepare a new planting hole not far away from the mother in the same manner, amending the soil with additional compost.
The finished product. Now we have two happy Pitogo banana plants, they won't even know what hit them. You can water at this point or just wait for rain.
The whole process can be done in under five minutes.
If you follow these steps, you will have great success in propogating bananas and you will see that by doing this often with your plants whenever the chance arises, the long term effect is plenty of plants that will grow taller, faster, and will be spreading the yard as fast as you can move them around.
Update: there were also some videos added on page three of this thread showing the pry bar method. Pasting the videos here as well: