Alright, so the plants haven't done anything apparent even though the weather has warmed up a bit, the stumps still essentially look like this:
Sorry, for some reason the actual pic from today wouldn't load, but it looks basically the same.
So I decided to call it, dig them out, and use the prime real estate for something else.
When I pulled the corm out, low and behold I found this:
Hard to tell fro m this pic, but the pup is curling up towards the vertical and it is still probably at least 2 inches below where the soil line is.
So I separated the 2 corms (double seedling) washed them and noticed among the mushy stuff, was still a lot of firm material as you can kind of see here:
So I potted up the corm section with the new growth so we will see what happens. I can now safely say that this seedling is in fact a cold hardy banana having survived the winter....LOL
Of course not a very desirable result if one wants big bananas, considering that little pup probably would not have broken the surface until sometime in July.
So I decided to replant the area with pups from one of my Dwarf Orinocos and the same HH parent that survived. My intention is to leave them both in the ground but protect them differently this coming winter. I did amend the soil by adding more drainage promoting material just in case moisture was the primary culprit....I don't think so based on where the corm was sitting, but who knows. Here area a couple of pics of the new plantings:
This one after putting a mulch of dried leaves under a composted mixture of shredded leaves and fir needles to hold the leaves in place.
This pic is to show what I have to do to keep the $&*@^&% excavating birds (Robins and Towhees) from tossing the mulch everywhere. I pruned up the Lonicera and the grape on either side and put the branches with leaves over the mulch to hamper access by the birds
So, the story continues and I will post any updates that seem relevant.