I am sharing this information because several months ago I tried to find information about pruning bananas and could not find it. I am not talking about digging out pups, but truly pruning out the height of a banana "tree"!
We are in West Virginia and have a conservatory with 11 varieties of bananas. When planting, we followed the expertise in books (espe Mr. Stokes) about the various average heights and tried to plant accordingly. Trouble is, 75 percent of them have turned out taller then the averages, even thought they are not leggy.
SO I have several trees pushing out against the ceiling of the polycarbonate, and the leaves don't like it one bit. I noticed that the base of a few of the trees was starting to thicken out a great deal, and suspecting that they were about to fruit, I trimmed out the top leaves, literally cutting the crown back a foot or so, and leaving plenty of leaves for energy.
Well, it appears to be working. Our gran nain is putting out a large stem that already has 10 hands of fruit!!! After the pruning, it had put out another two leaves and the WOW - there are fruit.
Hopefully, we will have the same success with the Namwah and the Pisang Ceylon. I also had to cut back a Hua Moa, even though it is not thickening yet. It is already about 14 feet at the crown.
If anyone has some advice, I would be very grateful!