I am growing basjoos in z8, Norway. But I can honestly say the weather here is much worse than yours. We have relatively mild winters, but summers are cool and rainy.

They grow good and recover nicely from protection here in the Chicagoland area!

how do you protect in chicago? do you try to save some stem, or bring it down to the ground?

I have planted one this year here in Southern NH. They are supposed to survive in zone 5.... Ask me next spring LOL

Yep I saved all the pseudostem...Here's what to do...

1. Construct a large cage out of wire mesh.

2. Wrap plastic (at least 4 mil) securely around the cage.

3. Wrap burlap/landscape fabric around banana pseudosten to prevent direct contact with leaves, Optional: Wrap some mini xmas lights aound burlap to turn on nights below the single digits.

4. Fit cage over banana pseudostem after the leaves have been frosted and cut-off.

5. Fill with DRY leaves/straw.

6. Cut a piece of plastic to cover the top, make sure it can easily be taken on/off for warm days and wet weather.

Here is what it looked like at the end of winter:

{{gwi:411739}}

{{gwi:411741}}
Already wanting to GROW!

--Weatherguy

Hi. Does the rot at the top ever travel downwards into the rhizome? Do you cut it off once you've uncovered it? Thanks.

I'm located just north of Toronto in a zone5b and have had my Basjoos planted in the ground since May 2004. Every year they seem to get bigger. In my opinion they do best in cooler climates against a south facing wall/foundation well protected by stong winds.

hey, tominnh, what town do you live in? I am in Amesbury, MA.,two towns from the N.H. border. this is my first yesr with basjoo, too.

Yeah I just cut it off, nope doesn't travel down. Now that I look at the picture for a while it kinda looks goofy.

nucci60 We are just around the corner here in Newton NH......!

Weatherguy- Wow... you really have got a great start on basjoo this summer... so let me get this straight, you actually wrapped the pseudostem in burlap first??? How thick??? Did you spray a copper based fungicide before the burlap??? I had thought of doing that technique, but I was afraid it would cause rot.. Guess I was way off... You are gonna have some bananas this year kid...lol... congrats...

Doniki:
It was just a double layer of burlap -- to keep the leaves from directly touching the stem, just incase they got a little wet (which they did). Nope I didn't use any copper based fungicide...but I did spray the top with some Fungicide3, but this was probably unnesessary. They are growing like gangbusters, I guess I should expect them to nearly double in size by the fall. The key is lots of water and fertilizer.

Weatherguy

Thanks weatherguy... Do us a favor and post some pics as it grows... Being that you saved so much pseudostem, I'm really interested to see what happens... flowers, bananas... Though it was fairly mild this winter, it's inspiring to see that can actually be done... Thanks again...

Here is the first picture:

{{gwi:411743}}

They should each have a few more leaves, but they snapped off in a recent thunderstorm.

...I'll be sure to keep everyone updated as the summer progresses.

Weatherguy

Has anyone considered or used pink fiberglass insulation to wrap around the stem over winter instead of burlap? Also, weatherguy do the first leaves burn under the sun after uncovering from the winter?

edbtz:
The first leaf was kind of yellowish and also skinner, but after that they started to grow bright green and full size.

Growing it here in z5 47362. I screwed up overwintering the thing and rotted it down to the ground. It's now put out about six suckers and is now close to two foot tall on the main plant. Good stuff.

I also wrapped each Pseudostem with burlap and managed to save a portion of each. As a result I really believe that it has sped up the growth process. From a 12" base the plants including leaves are about 5ft not bad for 5 weeks of growth. I can't compare it to weatherguys plants as his pictures are being blocked from my internet source (Workplace) I'll post my currents pics later.

Phil

So, since weather guy saved so much of the pseudostem he should see flowers at least...correct??? I remember last year someone posted a pic of a basjoo blooming here in the Cleveland area... The plant was flush against a South facing brick wall and was absolutely huge by summers end... How much stem do you have to save to have basjoo flower???

I have heard that there are folks in Alaska growing Musa Basjoo. I have never seen any real difference in performance for my Musa Basjoos if the trunk was saved or not.

Weatherguy - Please clarify one thing for me. In step three, of your instuctions, above, you say to wrap burlap around the pseudostem to prevent direct contact with the keaves. Are you refering to the leaves you dump into the cage, or the leaves of the basjoo plant?

Muncie, Indiana 47302, I have about 20 plants from last year that came back out of 22. Most of them around two feet tall, some taller. Although now they are all pupping like crazy and I have 2-3 in each place, one has 6!
A plant that I planted in 2004 though, it's around 40" so far this spring.
Great plants!

John NY:
I was referring to the leaves you dump in there. I'm not sure if you would want to add the frosted, brown, mushy leaves to the mix because they are damp, but I have seen others proctect them with the banana's actual foliage.

Thanks for the help. I currently have four varieties: basjoo, lasiocarpa, Dwarf Cavendish, and Hi color mini. I have a total of about 250. They are all in containers now, and I just put them all in a greenhouse for the winter, but I would like to put a couple of the basjoo and lasiocarpa in the ground. I did this a couple of years ago, and piled mulch on top of them. They came up the next year, but never got to more than a foot, or so. They were, however, pretty much in the open. Now, I would like to plant them in a relatively protected area, close to the house (SW exposure) where I planted some callas about 8 years ago, intending to dig and store them in the fall. I forgot to do this, and they have come up every year since.
All of these plants started as tissue culture liners, about 2 inches tall, in spring of 05. When I took the basjoo out, a couple of weeks ago, they were just about up to the ceiling in the GH. I'm afraid, if they have to go back in this fall, they'll be too big.

hey sandy0225! did you use any winter protection? how cold were your temps?

LOL! I have been lurking on Gardenweb for two years and this thread finally got me to join and comment. I guess I really am crazy about bananas. Anyhow, I have tried growing basjoo twice and failed. I am north of Cincinnati and at the northern edge of zone 6. Recently I went to a talk by Dr. David Franko, author of "Palms Wont Grow Here and Other Myths." He has a test garden at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, near here, where he grows basjoo, a couple types of palms, and red velvet bananas. I asked him about my failures and he said its most likely not the cold but the plant rotted. Which I thought to be true since they pretty much looked like slime when I dug around them in the spring. I did not protect them at all. He said once they had a good root system I would not even need to protect them...hmmm. Anyhow, he said he advised people to plant them on a little bit of a hill so their feet were not in water. When he does protect plants, he follows a similar protocol to Weatherguy, except he does not wrap plastic around the sides of the cage. His fills it with leaves and then covers the top to keep water out. Now, it was a few months ago and I may have the details a little fuzzy. I am going to give it a try again. I wish I could send you pictures of his test garden. He has a new variety of banana, I think from the basjoo, that grew over twenty feet in one season. I about fell out of my seat!

I protected my plants by piling 5 bags of leaves, still in the bags, over each plant after I cut the plants down to about 10" tall. I put one bag to the n,s,e,w of the stalk, then one on top of it, kind of flattened it out to make the whole thing shed water. Then this spring when the daffodils started blooming, I took all the bags off and let them start growing. Three or four of the ones that I protected had the whole 10" of stem left and started growing from that. The others just put up pups from the roots. It seems like when they have been planted longer they come back up faster. I have one that I planted in 2004, and it's about 45" tall already, compared to around 2 feet tall for my 2005 planted ones. Some nice person recommended that treatment on Gardenweb last summer as a 15 minute winterizing plan for basjoo and it worked for me. It was a warmer winter than usual for here, but I still think it would have worked anyway. One thing I noticed, don't plant them in almost full shade, that one didn't come back, and don't plant them in a place that holds water, the one near the gutter downspout did not come back!

I'm in Wisconsin, in a little pocket of zone 5a (zone 4 all around us). I haven't overwintered any yet though, so I'll know more next spring! I have six, so hopefully at least one will make it!!

I have to add this. Before this past winter, I also wrapped my 2 foot Basjoo stem with an old bath towel which was surrounded by 2 old tires. I also added wet soaking mulch ( wood mulch ) to the wrapped stem. I believe that wrapping the banana with burlap or an old bath towel really helps. When it comes to wrapping the plant, I would use something that is absorbent and breathable such as cotton. Burlap could help as well, and if you've had success with it, by all means use it. When I wrapped my basjoo late last fall, I had no idea anyone else 'wrapped' their basjoo before covering it with mulch. The reason that the mulch I had was wet is because the store where I bought it from, left the bags outside in the pouring rain. I also prepped my basjoo late that night in the pouring rain and it came out fine in the spring!

Hi-

Interesting thread! I'm wondering if zone 8 would need to chop, wrap, cage, and leaf insulate? We had about 5 nights under 32 last winter 26 being the lowest. I have a couple of bananas in pots that made it through but they were under cover (no rain). I would like to plant them out in the ground but wonder if I'll need to protect so much. Thanks, Amy

I live in British Columbia, Canada. I have no problem growing them. I bring them in for the winter, though last year I could have probablly kept them out side with mulch.Diana

Hello everyone

I've been enjoying the bananatalk for the past couple of weeks and feel it's time I joined in. I live in suburban London, England and have been growing bananas for many years. I don't know which zone this would correspond with - we can have 4 or 5 degrees of frost in the winter and a maximum of 90 degrees in the summer. I think the main problem is mild, damp winters. I wrap the plants up in sacking (is that what you call burlap?), old net curtains, horticultural fleece and anything breathable that I can find. As some of the plants are 12 ft plus tall - it can be quite scary to come round the corner of the house and find an enormous bloke lurking there!

I don't know the species as the original plant was given us as a pup from the garden of friends in Southern France. I kept it as a house plant for the first couple of years, then it went outside in the summer and indoors in the winter. Then I decided to take the risk and try it outside in the border. It produced pups and I moved them around but eventually settled for the south facing wall of the house. Twenty years later I now have quite a little family of all different heights and ages.

Two or three years ago a pseudostem produced an inflorescence with baby bananas - I was incandescent with pride!! This was in late August, so the weather became too cold for the male flower to develop. However .... this year the job has been done much earlier. I think the inflorescence had been overwintering under its wrappings because it popped out May. I understand that in warm climates it takes about twelve weeks for the bananas to ripen - so I may be the first person to produce outdoor bananas in the UK - fame at last!

We have a hosepipe ban here at the moment, so I am lugging watering cans about and feeding like mad. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

I hope Gardenguy replies to this - he sounds as if he knows what he's talking about - sorry - not that the rest of you don't too!

Those growing basjoo in Zone 5, if you DON'T protect and it dies back each year, what hieght can be expected at the end of the season? I'd actually prefer a die back each season if that limited the height since I want to put it in a spot where anything taller then 4' will be a problem.

So are any of these bananas planted in the north still surviving??

Mine come back every year in z5 Iowa.

Even some that I just threw a half bag of leaves
on came back this year-about half way through the winter
the leaves came off exposing it....still came back.
They get about 12' every year on the south side of the house.

Jim, I was shocked to see this thread is still alive. I started it five years ago. I see you really got into the hobby and have had much success with it.

I planted my first Basjoo outside (I had been overwintering them in pots indoors) last fall, on the south side of my new house. (Part of my house design included the banana tree I wanted to grow outside) I cut the stem down to around 2 feet. Put 4 bales of hay around the plants, filled the square with chopped dry leaves, put a round wire cage on top of the bales, and added more dry leaves to that, then covered the whole shebang with plastic to keep it all dry. It got down to -9 last winter, so though I hoped the plant would survive, I did not expect the original stems, just pups. I uncovered the plants when I started seeing growth push up through the plastic. The original stems survived and proceeded to grow and now I have a dozen or so pups also. Should I remove some of the pups? How many should I leave?
-Rosalinda

you should remove some pups when they get to two feet or so. Make sure you get a small chunk of the corm. "bananas. org," is a great forum dedicated only to bananas with much info.

Yea,I was just checking to see who lifted it back into circulation(-:
And to see if you(the original poster)had noticed!

Thanks!

I've got my first baby Musa Basjoo in my garden (zone 6b) and my next door neighbor has had one for about 3 years (and it's crazy! Starts from NOTHING in the spring and in 3 months time it's taller than her house!). There are several around Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, MI, too. Always planted next to the house, out of the wind.

Stil going strong. The very first one I planted, it died out, bamboo choked it out. The one we have planted now that is oldest is about 5 years old.
Plant them a foot deeper here and you don't have to mulch them as long as your soil is well-drained.