GATrops

Here's a different thought on overwintering bananas in our cooler climates. I've never tried this but my dad used this method every year to overwinter his sugarcane stalks that would be planted the following spring. After he cut the sugarcane stalks, he would take the stalks, strip the leaves and lay them on top of a pretty heavy bed of pine straw on the ground. He would then cover it with more pine straw and finally cover the whole thing with a good layer of dirt. Keep in mind this is southeast coastal GA but we still get temps in the low 20's (and sometimes upper to middle teens) during the winter. You could modify this approach and incorporate some plastic (or better yet Tyvek) in between the upper layer of straw and dirt to keep the rain from soaking the plants as they lay asleep during the winter. When spring comes dig them up and drop the corm in the ground and let it grow. I don't know how much of a problem rotting of the stems would be but it might work. It would surely be easier than storing them in crawl space. Granted that sugarcane stalks are not bananas but he never lost a stalk of cane overwintered using this method. I am thinking about giving it a try this year with a pseudostem or 2. You could also build you "bank" (my dad's word for this approach to storage) under a shelter of some sort to even further protect it. What does the group think?