Jack Daw

Boys, I gave it a lot of thought and thanks to some PK, DB, GN, SDC and RP observations I found out several important factors.
But I owuld like to say how happy I am, that someone's willing to share his ideas on this. Ever from the beginning I considered BigDog's technique interesting, but wanted to prolong the duration of active growth by about 2 or 3 months (November, March and April), leaving the plants with ideal 60 to 70 days of active rest.
This can not be however done keeping them bare-root.

Marcel, as I read it, I slowly find out that you might have one or more other, different problems.
- the plants root easier, when the soil has almost sand consistency, thus if you work on it in the spring it should be much more ideal for the naners. If and when you work with the soil, I suppose it's in the autumn, as a part of the next spring prep. This is however not sufficient, because the frost, rain and snow will melt it into one solid piece of mass, so unless you fertilized it, it won't have much of an effect.
- the second thing is that our soils are so rich and good, that it's bad (literally, southern soils can't compare to ours and we have to come out from this assumption). They have excellent water holding capacity (!) (one short rain can stay in the upper soil even many days during very hot weather (30+°C/85+°F) and we have to minimize this element in favor of another attribute: heat capacity (optimal would be: easy to heat up, slowly cool down). Therefore I think that several preparative steps in the early winter will be necessary. So for starters:

a) I read somewhere that Frank heats up the soil in early spring with black plastic covers, now this is a great improvement, but not sufficient. To keep the banana growing at normal pace (so that it doesn't sit in the soil inactive 2, 3, 4 weeks) we would have to have the temperature soil at least those 8°C we keep them stored at (to eliminate the few days of shock they would come through).
This temperature is also good from one other reason, which is fruiting.
But we can cross this bridge once we come to it.

b) Heating up the soil wouldn't be a problem, if it didn't freeze so deeply. Now bare with me, because I think that freezing to 5 or more cm is healthy. It is what makes our soils so fertile. Lots of bugs, insects, ... and other animals (and some bacteria) die at this temps, so it would be a natural clean up. They also work as fertilizer, because many new soil bacteria colonies start working in the spring and so do another animals.
I experimnted with microculture heating system this year. A complicated name for something so stupid. Rotting hay. I put about 300L (80gallons) into the shade of my garage (constant year-round temperature there is about 8-14°C/45-58°F). I took a large pile of mowed grass from my yard (small pieces, my mower cuts it into tiny pieces) and put it into my garage (late winter/early spring temps) and waited. Then I measured up the temp. Decaying hay produced the more heat than I expected, a pile that I had was way too hot in the epicenter, more than 45°C (115°F). The outter layers were almost as cool as the surrounding area, 8°C.
Now if we move even larger piles over the areas that we know for sure will be a banana area in the future, we might ensure, that during the worst freezes (-10°C, -14°C...) the temps will be idle and once the worst forsts are over (usually within a week here), the hay will produce enough heat to warm up the soil to certain levels. Combined with black plastic bags over the hay (like a very small tent) might also do even more warming up.
This cover could be putin the place on the day, when the temps should fall below -5°C (so called frost threshold).

c) fertilizer/compost should be released to the soil in advance as well, along with some sand. Black soils with some sand should hold the temperatures well enoughfor us.

d) now the worse part, inner prep and end of season prep.



And we continue...


Bob I was thinking more of a combination. It is a great idea to start the plant sooner (e.g. in March in here) and then, as the temps get idle outside, plant it out.
I also assume that there are 2 ways of doing this:
Either keep the plants in soil and dry, cold conditions for 2 months, or store them bare-root.
What Marcel described could be efficient, but I think that the cage itself is not that good idea. For a small plant, a cage would take too much soil along with the roots rendering it useless, because the ideal banana soil would simply go to small pieces once he pulls the soil out and the roots would be without any soil left. Large corms could aslo have problems and dare I say it, they would make it impossible for you to replace the cage with bigger. It takes maybe 2 or 3 well placed pups each year.

I was thinking how to counteract this problem and the solution once again exists. Bags. There are materials, like Zelta (sorry, don't know the English name), which have larger eyes (designed for storing potatoes). These holes or eyes hold the soil, but release the water from the soil.
It would eliminate the problem with corm getting to large, simply open the side of the bag.
And it really works, Christmas trees are sold here in those bags. Now consider that they are harvested and supplied in October and they still live and are in perfect shape in December.

How to put the bag in and out? Now that's what I'm thinking about these days, but I will solve this mystery eventually. The problem's not really in putting it there, but pulling it out. It will have to be large enough to consume the entire corm AND surrounding soil, but that would make the plant incredibly heavy. How to pull it out, so that I don't damage the bag (solid textile from 2mm thick fibres)? Now that's a question. One solution would be to tie it to the p-stem and carry it all with a hand truck.

If you think, that the roots could grow through the bag, you're right. The bag limits only the soil, slowly growing roots can get through, making tight holes for themselves.

Any ideas to my plan? There's lots of possible failing points, but I think it has some foundations.


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I will do this with my bananas, Dwarf Brazilian..., but surely not this year, there simply isn't any reason to do so. There will be a harvest this time next year. Hopefully.

__________________
Thnx to Marcel, Ante, Dr. Chiranjit Parmar and Francesco for the plants I've received.



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