April 30 2013; October 2, 2013

. . . and I may be wrong . . .

That is so weird, Evan. Maybe it's because whenever I cut off the large stems of my bananas they had already fruited and finished growing any more leaves. Looks like some of yours still had growing tips down inside the trunk.

A monocot shouldn't keep growing if the growing tip is cut off. So maybe with bananas it DOES matter how low down you cut, but there's possibly no way to know where the growing tip is.

Mine have never flowered but what I've read agrees with what you said Elaine. Folks talk about preventing the crown from rotting, which is one reason to lay plastic over the 1st layer of mulch. I'm just guessing that the growing tip is fairly close to the corm on these smaller P-stems. Larger P-stems often don't grow back here.

dyzzypyxxy said:
Was going to suggest you might want to separate off the pup on your big plant, pot it up and bring it into the basement, in case it might not survive the winter. Don't cut (or break) it off though, if you do it won't grow next spring.

Now I don't think that I have a pup I think that one of the cannas in the area creeped round the basjoo. Next year all the very close cannas are going elsewhere.

What do you do with a pup if you don't cut or break it off?

TY for all the info. I very much appreciate it since I am new to growing a hardy banana.

When you said cover the part left above ground. Would a five gallon bucket be ok? Maybe wrap the trunk with burlap?

Mulch it deep, would be my advice. David, if it is a short enough pup, just pile mulch right up so it covers the top of the stem entirely. Those stems are full of water and if they freeze the water-filled cells burst, and whole thing collapses and dies back.

The point of mulching is to retain heat that is rising from the ground. The deeper the mulch, the more insulation you are providing. It also prevents freezing/thawing which can 'heave' up the ground around your plant. It gradually gets colder the longer the cold weather lasts of course but this is less destructive than freezing and thawing cycles. In spring, you can easily rake back the mulch to help the ground warm up faster.

Teresa, must admit I've never seen the point of wrapping a stem in burlap, unless you're worried about critters eating the stem. The stem itself doesn't generate any heat so wrapping it doesn't keep it warmer. You can wrap a human or an animal because they give off heat, and wrapping keeps it around the body. But a plant? - the burlap could even keep the stem too wet if it got a real deep soaking of rain at some point. Mulch insulates better because it is loose, with air pockets in it so it drains, and breathes a bit. Not sure about the bucket idea, unless you then cover the bucket with mulch to insulate it, too. If you're going to do that, forget the bucket. Unless you really want to keep the plant entirely dry as well. Hmm, not sure.

Now, if you wrap it with a string of holiday lights, that does generate heat. People here do that to keep their plants warmer on cold nights. But you can't mulch over the lights or it creates a fire hazard.

I have read some posts elsewhere from folks in Minnesota who did this:

Cut down to 10 " of so.
Pile on leaves and straw
Cover that with poly
Put rocks around perimeter
Pile up more leaves and straw on top of tha to final depth of ~ 2 feet.

The area where mine is stays milder than Zone 5 B would indicate since I have had Cannas over wintered in the ground there since 2010. I have covered them with leaves and straw to depth of ~ 1 foot past several winters. In 2010 we put Zero mulch on them as my wife forgot they were there. That was a mild winter.
Jan '15 was quite cold. Jan '14 was brutal.

BTW - I do not have a pup - is is just a creeping canna.

I'm with Elaine, do lots of mulch. I look at it this way, you babied the plant all year so why do the bare minimum that MIGHT be necessary to protect it. You want your plant to form a pad and lots of pups. Then you can experiment away.

I've had 4 years with multiple nights below -10F (z5b years) since planting basjoo. @Bubbles posted a link to a Logee's video in which they mulch a clump of Musa sikkimensis. Logee's is in z6a I believe and I've followed that procedure every year since.

What Logee's did is cut the p-stem to ~12"; add ~24-30" of straw mulch; add plastic sheet; add 12-24" more mulch. You want to mulch 18-24" out from the p-stem.

I transplanted a few last year. One pair of transplants I mulched to about 30-36" and plastic on top but no additional mulch and both survived, see photo. Another I mulched with a few feet of grass clippings and no plastic but it didn't return. I'll try this again this year with plastic on top.


I believe the Logee's video is no longer available but they have a page with directions here: http://www.logees.com/howtoput...
This is very interesting! P-stems are cut much higher even though it states 12"!

A video on uncovering in the Spring. https://www.youtube.com/v/Qcc_...

Thanks Evan for all that elaboration and link.