Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

My Ice Cream just pushed out a flag leaf and is about to bloom. I have five pups around the fruiting mother plant. I would like to remove two of the pups. Will removing a couple 2ft pups hurt the fruit production or should I go ahead and separate them?

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

Would be bad for fruit develop to separate them now.

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

If done properly, it could benefit the mother plant and can be done at any time.

I remove large pups from from newly flowering plants on a regular basis.

You only want to remove a couple of 2 foot pups, that should be very easy.

You would have to be a Banana Butcher to mess things up.



mar 15 - The Bloom


mar 25 - The Bunch


This is a photo of 1 of the 3 pups removed from a Namwah, all pups had pseudostems over 7 feet.

These plants were in a pot, which made it a little more difficult than if they were in the ground.

Not one leaf on the mother plant showed any signs of stress, and within two weeks the vacated spaces

were completely filled with new roots. The fruit quality and bunch weight will improve because of this

minor surgery.

apr 7 - 1 of 3 Pups separated


apr 16 - The Bunch


may 18 - The Bunch

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

:pics::woohoonaner:

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

if it stresses the mother plant in any way, yes it will effect fruit quality and production, meaning disturbing by cutting into the mother plant ie separating pups or disturbing the root system. Hope that helps.

Big Tony

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

Im in a similar situation but Im a banana butcher the last couple of pups ive tried to remove from various plants ended up breaking off a few cm underground and failed to grow, one broke horizontal as i pulled it out of the ground the main stem died but it managed to shoot off a new pstem. Anyhow with my bad run im letting the pups go for it, it currently has 4.

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

The problem might be your potting mix.

There are many different types and shapes of pups, with multiple ways of collecting them.

With practice comes experience, if you can see it, you can separate it.

This is a "Peeper Top", after 7 days in #17 Pro Banana Mix.

may 15


may 22


These are different than a "Peeper Top", but they could be successfully separated at this point.

Instead of using a shovel, the tool of choice here would be a razor blade.

may 11


may 13


Here's another type of pup.

apr 21


apr 21


may 7


may 10

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

I'm not using potting mix they are in the ground. Thanks for the pics. I've noticed the pups grow a bit different with each of the species I grow and your definitely correct practice brings experience and hopefully success the next time. After the 2 failures my last one came out perfectly with a massive amount of roots and started growing within weeks.

Re: Remove pups while mother plant is fruiting?
 

I separated the two pups right after my last post in this thread. Update: removing the pups didn't appear to do any harm at all. In fact, the bloom that came out of the mother was enormous and the plant looks healthy.