We had high winds here today and they uprooted one of my musa orinocos. I was going to leave them in the ground until the first frost, but since it was uprooted, I decided to move ahead with my winter plan now since it's only a matter of a few weeks until frost.
I bought a 18 gallon storage tote from Walmart (they are cheap!) and drilled drainage holes in the bottom. I made up a really light and airy soil mix of potting soil, perlite and wood chips. Dug the orinocos up, washed the ground soil off the corm and roots and potted all 3 into the storage tote. I then cut off the leaves and cut one of them down to a more manageable height. I don't want them exceeding 8 feet inside during the winter. I'm going to drag them outside on warm sunny days until winter is here and bring them in at night. Once it's too cold to go outside I have an area of my basement that I set up with 35000 lumens of light. The temperature down there will be 65-70 all winter.
I watered the soil good today, and I won't water it again until the top inch or two are dry. Good plan? I plan on doing the same thing with my ensete maurelii and musa basjoo on Sunday. The reason I'm not storing them dormant is I don't really have a spot that stays 45-50 degrees all winter and I don't want to lose half my pseudostem due to it drying out or withering away. Here is a picture. The one I cut back has already pushed a half inch tonight.
