A day in the life of a pup
 

Today was pup removal day here at the casa. My pup Chica decided to help. Here we are getting ready to dig.



These are the pups to be removed.



Some digging around to get all the roots with the pup.



The cut pup.



The first removed pup. It looks small but it measured 4-1/2 feet from the bottom of the corm to the tip of the tallest leaf. This is also the first pup to be taken from any of the plants in my yard!



Here it is wrapped in moist newspaper ready to be plastic bagged.



And here is Chica putting her seal of approval on the packing job. The box is about 5 feet long and weighed about 7-1/2 pounds! Hope it gets there in one piece.



In the process of digging the pups out I learned that I'm not watering deep enough and the soil is going back to clay in just 5 months after serious ammending and and continued mulching. I think i need to just remove all the clay soil from my yard down about ten feet and back fill it with sand and compost! :rolleyes:

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

Looks good MOMO...instead of removing your clay (I know you were joking...I think) add a couple of inches of compost on top and top that with a couple of inches of mulch. Then stop by your local bait store and pick up a can or two of worms and dump them out next to the 'nanas. They'll aerate your soil and move the compost down into the clay for you...Z

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

I think you did a great job here in showing how to separate a pup.
I agree with Jetstream on what you should do for the soil. I just keep adding and adding to mine, the worms will come and eventually you will have some nice soil.

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

You have some beautiful plants there! Love the Reds!

Maybe someone can clarify this, but I usually don't worry about getting roots with the pup and cut them off when sending pups throught the mail. I've always heard that once they were disturbed like that, they wouldn't grow and the corm would need to produce new ones. I've planted some pups with roots and then had to move them to another spot. When I dug them up, the old roots were rotted and the corm was producing new white roots. Just curious why you you dug so much to get the roots with it?

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

Well, I have not had that much experience in pup removal and this was what the new owner suggested so that's how I did it! He can remove them if he wants. The other pup went straight into potting soil in a 15 gallon container and will be kept in the greenhouse til spring when it will be planted at my friends house. I'll see what the roots look like at that point.

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

Jeff, you are right on ;) Old roots go belly up once disturbed. Corm grows new white roots. Removing old roots reduces chance of corm rotting. That is unless you get soil with the roots and imediately replant.
Mike

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

ditto mike..

if i only could live in such a place called " banana land"..

the way i hear it if you guys don't clean up and do maintenance, you would have a big mess.. i see this happening in my gh already.

great pics from banana land, good looking setup too !!

so what's up with the surf board?? hiding it from better half?? LOL

excellent tutorial for newbs !!

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

Thanks SG, I have the surfboard parked there while I am redoing the garage. I noticed last year during the heavy rains that the garage roof was sagging and collecting water in the middle so I had to replace the main beam and the supports as well as jacking up the middle to remove the sag. I'm almost done now. The green house is also full of my short boards and other junk from the garage. Then there is the driveway. Talk about a mess! :eek:

Re: A day in the life of a pup
 

I had no idea that the old roots would just rot like that. Good thing to know.