I have had my basjoo in the ground for 2 years now. This year it has three blooms, two with bunches of bananas (I was able to keep the pseudostems alive through our zone 6 winter with some heavy duty mulching and Xmas lights). Now I probably have 20 or so trees ranging from large trees to small pups. The "colony" is thinning out in the middle with the demise of the blooming stems and therefore the group is spreading outward. I have two questions

1. How big do pups have to be to seperate them from the mother (I like to dig one up and keep it in the garage as "insurance" )?

2. I think that by next year if all these stems come up, I need to thin the colony, what is the best way to do this and get the plants growing back in the middle of the group where I would prefer they'd stay?

Thank you, Todd