mikevan

It is my understanding that corm size is directly proportional to plant vigor. All other things being equal, of course. From what I've read, commercial plantings will limit a plant to 3 pseudostems per corm. The mother and two keiki - one being smaller than the other. These rotated out - as the mother was harvested, the next largest would become the mother and another keiki would be allowed to grow. I think this was to balance leaf to fruit - at least one report indicated that if too many nanners grew from the same stool, productivity would be hindered. Too many pups taking energy from the fruiting pseudostems. Not sure if this is true, tho it does make sense.

On the other hand, more leaf means more food going to the corm. And the corm is the life of a banana plant. You can cut away everything else - but so long as you have a healthy section of corm, you're sure to have a nanner plant in short order.

Every pup I got that had a large portion of corm - yours included - seemed to just jump out of the ground with growth. I'd plant them, then get banana-slapped because I didn't move out of the way fast enough. Those that I got that had just the barest amount of corm took the longest to get established and start growing. My Brazilian came as a pretty small shoot with a nice clump of corm. It popped out a new leaf in a few days and now has a second and it hasn't even been two weeks yet! Even with a small shoot - the size of the corm gave it excellent vigor. My DC and SDC were the same - huge honking corms with modest stems - and they're growing like weeds now. On the other hand, a new rajapuri I got that had very little corm took a very long time to get established and at 3 weeks old is just now putting out new leaves.

So - I would leave just a couple of pups on a corm, or three, to encourage good corm formation. Leaves feed the corm, so a few good stems coming out of a corm makes it stronger - so long as they're all contributing. ie - if you have a pup that's perpetually in shade and being supported by the others, then cull it. Then just rotate them so you always have one maturing while the others are a work in progress. I'll have to dig out my notes and provide some links.

Of course - this is just from casual reading and incidental experience and observation - dig around and verify for yourself just in case I'm misunderstanding things.

Be well,
Mike