In my experience here, when I remove a good following-on sucker (i.e. not a water sucker) that has some fully developed leaves [IMG]
[/IMG](i.e. not a young sword sucker), which is often the case with our variety here, then when this is re-planted it is suffering from a loss of nutrition and water due to disruption of the root system. Since I cannot provide shade for the hundreds of plantings that we might be doing here, I've found that its best to cut half of every leaf off, including the "cigar," if it has one. This saves the plant from loosing water through the leaves while the sun is out. To help the plants with their nutrition needs, I spray a good foliar application on all remaining leaves and pseudostems once a week. I prefer to make my own chicken manure tea or pig manure tea, if you're familiar with this sort of thing, but I've also used commercial products available here. I add a fungicide for the Sigatoka protection needed here. So this takes care of the lack of nutrition from being wrenched from the ground; I'm not sure that any of the roots left after pulling up a sucker are immediately able to help the corm, but need to re-grow the tiny mini-root hairs to function properly. My experience has been that with this method the plants start re-growing much quicker than if they'd been cut down all the way to the corm, and there's nothing I like better than giving my plants a jump on getting re-growing.
