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Old 11-04-2010, 04:30 PM   #293 (permalink)
Bob
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Default Re: Time to put the bananas to sleep for the Winter

Quote:
Originally Posted by PAbananas View Post
BOB Unbelivable. A few questions if you don't mind. Some of you plants are lying down and some upright and none wrapped. Do you have any problem with drying out? My winters are cold and I am not sure what I am doing. Last year I built 5' enclosers around all my bananas and filled them with mulch. It worked ok but 15 yards of mulch is not cheap. This is my first year in a cold cellar and cold use all the advice I can get. I dug all but 2 bananas to put in the cellar. My one mistake was I poured a floor in the cellar instead of leaving it dirt. I don't no if thats going to cause a problem? I hope not.
I inherited my root cellar with the house and it has a poured floor in the walkway in the middle and dirt on the sides. I would have prefered to stand them all up but didn't have room. I learned this from a site I couldn't read in German from some guy who was one of my early cold weather growing "idols". I gathered from looking at the pics of his plants over the years that the Ensete's in particular tended to rot when layed down. Frank who started this thread years ago has had great success just laying bananas down in a crawl space so I'm not sure if they're as prone to rot as the Ensetes. Yes they do tend to desicate some over winter but I wonder if wrapping the roots in a damp towel may help? I'm really not sure and I've only been doing this for about 2 years now so am still learning and never afraid to experiment. I've been pleasantly surprised at being successful with things I've been told or read couldn't be done.
Here's a link from this year to that site I mentioned in German but well worth looking over every picture to get what you can out of it. It has the past years photos too that I mentioned.

Bananen, Anregungen u. Tips.

Howard I love the huge bases on the Ensete's and now know why our old pal Tog was the Ensete Nut. I bet yours flowers next year.
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Last edited by Bob : 11-04-2010 at 04:33 PM.
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