asacomm

Hello friends,
Considering from the commonsense, within the limited space like in pot/con-
tainer, suckers should be removed in order that the mother stem get more
nutritions.
But on the other hand, where there are enough spaces, it would not be
recommended to remove suckers as it gives some stresses to the mother
stem.
Your comments will be anticipated and thanks in advance.
Stan

MediaHound

A good mat would have one tall stem in fruit, one stem next in line close to fruiting, and one small short sucker after that. If you wish to alternate removal of the pups with the smallest sucker, that can be done. So instead of removing pup #4 that emerges, one could remove #3 and leave #4 to become the last in line that may be left.
On larger mats with a high level of care and fertilization, and not a large space constraint, there could be many more stems than this, but this gives an idea of the system that's used. With limited space, the opposite could be considered.
Staggering them is key.

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Taylor

Jarred-
What do you do if you have a mom and a pup the same size and putting out leaves on the same day. This is happening with my DC and my Zebrina.
I would like to remove the pups, but I don't know if I should.
TIA

MediaHound

Mat management is really up to you... you should have another stalk ready to take over once the mother stalks die back.
I have an Ice Cream now that was planted out as one pseudostem. It had a pup emerge and both grew at about the same rate. Now the pup is blooming ahead of the mother pseudostem! And there are two or three small pups. I'm leaving them the way they are for now, I won't remove those newer pups because the plant is blooming and the pups are too close to the blooming p-stem.... but that's just me..

Anyway, you can remove them if you want, but you might want to leave one too... But do it before the plant blooms as you shouldn't disrupt the roots so much if it's blooming, if you can avoid it.
You can have a mat going or you can have one stalk thats just a mother you keep removing pups from... I've seen and done both and it's really up to you and what your after. Commercial growers leave quite a few on one stand, but if you want to get stands going in several places and you only have one plant to do it with, pull the pups off as fast as you can, they'll come back..

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Bananaman88

I had almost the same situation today as Jarred...two pseudostems almost exactly the same size (about 8-9'), though neither blooming yet, with about 4 pups. The pups varied in size from one just poking through the mulch, to one about 1' tall, one about 3', and the last about 4'. I decided that I needed to remove some of the pups to facilitate (I hope) blooming and fruiting. I left the two large pseudostems and removed all pups with the exception of the one barely poking through and the 3-footer, mostly because I was trying to take into consideration where it was growing and whether I wanted my big banana next year to be closer to the house or closer to the lawn. I removed them with as little roots as possible so as not to disturb "Mom" too much. I am donating them to a horticulturist friend of mine at the Houston Zoo tomorrow. Hopefully I will see bloom within the next couple of weeks. We don't normally see frost here until sometime near Christmas but temps do cool and slow the growth of my bananas before that. So, if I'm going to get fruit before it cools off I really need my nanners to get with it!