RoundHound

My Apple Banana has tons of suckers constantly shooting off from it, unfortunately they have all been water suckers. Should I keep chopping them off as they emerge or leave one or two on? Should I even bother with trying to transplant them for fruiting purposes? My Ice cream Banana has had no pups emerge at all. The plants are only 3.5 months old but they have very different results.

Kylie2x

This is a past post from Joe Real about suckers...I bet someone around here would love to have the extras...


Most plants that produce suckers will tend to have these two kinds and some are in-between kinds though. Even asparagus, bamboos, and other rhizome producing monocots have this tendency.

Adaptation-wise, this is advantageous to the plant. The sword sucker type are best suited when there is competition around. The plant need not spend its resources on the leaves when its priority is to get as fast as possible to the sunlight, ensuring competitive edge in a denser environment. That is why this naturally happens when your banana mat is wider or the clump is denser, and that is why the sword type pups are designed to grow really fast with bigger sturdier trunks. The leaves will be formed when it gets a big headstart. Some varieties will have mostly sword sucker types though, even if the mat is not dense, perhaps these cultivars have adapted to the usually dense settings. Of course there are some advantages to the umbrella type pups in a very sparse setting. These pups are well ahead photosynthesizing very early on to help the plants gather more carbohydrates needed to form sword sucker type pups when it gets too crowded. I speculate that most dwarf types originated from umbrella type suckers when these sport mutations become etched into the plant's genes, but that is just my speculation.

I have removed sword sucker types of pups when they are just 1" tall, but that is almost a near laboratory condition. The best in my experience is to separate them when they are at least 1 to 3 ft tall at the trunk, depending on the variety, just before the leaves start to become bigger than 4" wide. This way, you don't need to trim off the leaves when transplanting them, They are the fastest growers among other types of pups as they were designed to be, from my explanation above.

Also,
They are more than OK to use. Not only speaking from my actual tested experience in the tropics and here, I also came across several scientific articles in very credible scientific journals discussing the merits and advantages of using the sword-sucker types of pups over the umbrella types. This is the practice done by most banana growers when replacing plants damaged in-situ as they grow very quickly. They grow several times faster than a the same height tissue-cultured plant, and also bloom much earlier, and with tremendously bigger bunches of fruit than either the tissue cultured plantlets or umbrella types of pups. Of course in time, the tissue cultured plants or umbrella types of pups will produce sword sucker pups of their own and after the clump has matured or mat has grown wider, the differences between the two types should no longer be noticeable except that the other one gets established much faster, perhaps 6 months to 2 years ahead.

When you take out sword sucker type of pup, make sure to chunk out with it, the biggest portion of mother corm that you can get away with, without dramatically damaging the mother plant (if it is still there in the clump).

Other people also confused the definition between sword-sucker, umbrella, and water types of pups and wouldn't know what they are throwing away.

Joe

RoundHound

Thanks for the info! So I should leave the clumps of water suckers on in hopes that a sword sucker will develop and shoot out then? Also don"t worry about transplanting the water suckers either? I have included a pic to show what I have going on right now

JoeS475

Based on what I've learned about potted bananas so far (mine are all in pots) I'd put it in a pot at least 2x the size, and leave the pups on for a while.

Once bananas are potbound they seem to stop growing vertically, and pup more in my experience.

When the pups are 1'-2' tall they should be ready to separate, although last fall I was able to separate and keep a live a 1" pup.

Good luck,

~Joe

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MediaHound

Generally, the older the plant, the more vigorous the sword suckers become.
That banana plant seems like its probably stressing from that pot. Those pups are probably worth keeping... they look good to me..
And when you say you chop them off when they emerge, how exactly are you chopping and where? Topping it off at the soil line, or severing down and completely removing the mass under the soil?
Regards

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Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

RoundHound

I cut off two suckers when I went to this size pot, I had a total of 6 suckers to begin and it was really crowded. I took them off as close to the corm as I could severing them off with razor knife. I do need to upgrade my pot size though, I will need to find a 20 incher or so. You say I should keep the pups even though they are water suckers? I suppose leaving them on will promote a sword sucker at some point or are they taking resources away from the mother plant? When it comes time to separate the pups what is the best way to do so and how much of a root system/corm do I need to take with it?

RoundHound

Tomorrow I am going to go out an get some bigger pots to put them in and maybe see if I can take off a few suckers and transplant them. I know I need to slice them off the mother plant deep down under the soil but how much root material should I take along with it? Anything else I need to be concerned with?

modenacart

If the pups look healthly I would keep them. I think people are making too big a deal out of water pups and sword suckers. I have had water pups that were taken off my cavendish that did better then the sword pups I left on them.

I plant is a plant, when the corm gets nice and big it will grow like crazy.