Sucker question
 

I have nice banana growing in container.About 3 weeks ago it had a baby next to it.Little banana sucker.I want to seperate it from mother plant but don't know if its not to early.

I'm attaching picture hoping someone can tell me if i can go ahead and cut this baby off already and tell me how to do that so i wont loose mother or the baby.


Thanx and happy growing....;)

Re: Sucker question
 

Way , way to early to separate. Believe it or not some varieties don't develop good roots till they're almost as big as the parent though in the tropics its not as essential as it is in the north. Do you know what variety you have?

Re: Sucker question
 

not sure - i don't remember - sure thing is only that it's a dwarf.
Cavendish maybe ??

Here is a picture of mother nana may be someone can tell.

Re: Sucker question
 

Don't do it... I have tried............

Re: Sucker question
 

wait until the pup is at least a foot tall before you divide. The pup must have its own roots to survive. One way to tell if it has roots it to take the whole plant out of the pot and take away some potting soil and examine the roots. If it is growing its own roots then take a shape knife and seperate it from the mother plant.

Re: Sucker question
 

Thanx!

I will wait then till it reaches 1 foot.

Re: Sucker question
 

I will be cutting these off soon, but remember they are in a pot & I can check if they have a good supply of roots.... before I start wacking away......

Re: Sucker question
 

I can't belive that one in the middle looks like it grows out of old one.


I just repoted mine few days ago in a bigger pot btw. I checked for sucker's roots and unfortunately it doesn't have any yet.
Still grows out directly out of mother plant aprox. 4 inches under ground, so i left it attached to mother for now will wait another month or so then i will check again.

Would be nice to have extra banana ;)

Re: Sucker question
 

Its most likely the same one if it didn't flower...

Re: Sucker question
 

Hades....It looks like you have a Super Dwarf Cavendish. I would also recomend cutting back on your wattering a bit, it looks like you might be having some rot issues on the p-stem of the main plant. Over the winter you can almost let the soil completely dry out.

Re: Sucker question
 

You are correct it is the mother plant, this is what I do for storage of some of my plants. I found out if you give them a hard cut back you can usually get it to pup.... this one sat in a box barerooted for a couple of months before I had time to pot it up.... I was saving it till spring until everyone wants one. heres another one I pulled out.

Re: Sucker question
 

How did ya cut it.Looks like it was nice & fat banana and the cut is so clean.

Back to my banana its not rot on the plant u see there i did cut a few leaves and this is old leave that goes slowly dry on the pic. At least i hope so:)
The rotten part its only on the one side where i cut the dry leave.

Re: Sucker question
 

Thats funny you say what I use to cut them back with..... I use a fish cleaning knife... works great, the only thing is you have to keep it sharp.... With bananas they love water & fert. but in winter they are like a cactus, really dry ground. I have a saim ruby in my living room & it grows great & I hardly water it. mabe once or twice a month if I remember to do that. I don't have the color in it like the summer but still it is really nice.