JoeReal

Simple technique of making the late season blooms or immature fruits survive Zone 9 winters.

It is such a heartache to see the flag leaf coming out in the Fall. You knew that it will not bloom again from the same stalk, and you knew that there is not enough time for the fruits to grow to be usable. Instead, you envision big piles of banana leaves and stalks in the dumpster or compost heaps, and you knew that it was a wasted effort, good while it lasted and the reward has slipped away into oblivion.

I had such a Fall season banana bloom from my Dwarf Brazilian, which later became immature fruits, ready for the heap. I would have given up but not without trying. But there is hope, and the best way to show that the technique could work is from the sample surviving bunch of fruits shown that I took picture of this morning, the fruits of my efforts:



The Dwarf Brazilian banana fruits has survived prolonged 26 deg F temperature, 52 days that have frosty early mornings and three weeks of which are freezing nights. My cold hardy bananas can easily shake off these conditions, by just losing all the leaves but the pseudostems of the clump are intact, alive and retain their colors until spring and then coming up better than ever, that's what cold hardy fruiting bananas can really do. Unfortunately, if you have blooms or immature fruits going into the winter, they would also die out together with the leaves, and ultimately the entire pseudostem would die out simply because it is the pseudostem's terminal life after it blooms.

The simple technique
When you have such late season fruits or blooms going into the winter, just a week before the first frost will come (look at the forecast), pull all the banana leaves and wrap them together into one one bundle with the blooming stalk or fruit bunch in the middle. Tie it together with bungee cords or garden stretch tie. Some of the leaf petiole will break from all of those bending, but not pulled apart. In effect, we are using the banana leaves as natural insulating materials to protect the bloom or the fruit. Wrap tightly the base of the leaves and the top portion of the pseudostem with a small portion of frost blanket, just enough to cover only the leaf petioles and the top one ft of pseudostem. There are strong winds, and having a nice strong wrap means you wouldn't have to redo it. It would have been best to show it with pictures, but they were erased before I transferred them into my PC.

Come spring time, when the minimum temperature is consistently above 40 deg F, and danger of frosts are over, cut out the dead portions of the leaves. Cut away the leaf petioles that are not green. Remove the outer sheaths that are dead. Our idea here is to maximize photosynthesis of what remains. It would be slow to fill up those surviving fruits, but the fruits will become plump, and edible. Fortunately, bananas has a large surface area in the trunk, and there are lots of food reserves in the corm and the pseudostems that it would be easily translocated into fruits when days get warmer. The fruits themselves are green and will photosynthesize. Most of all, you will have tree-ripened banana fruits before the summer's end to enjoy.



The simple technique will not work when there is an arctic blast. But most winters, it will work for you in zone 9.

chong

Very nice, Joe. I never thought of that.

I assume from looking at your pictures that you bunch the leaves up. I would wonder then how you'll cover the flower or fruit bunch if the leaves are pointing up. So, do you bend them down just above the petioles?

Thanks for sharing.

asacomm

Wonderful pics and the technique, JoeReal.
A flower bud of my banana started to appear just before the first frost, so
just for trial I cut all the petioles and leaves and protected the flower bud
by soft straw mat and put a plastic cap thereon. I still don't see if this was
successful or not as the lowest tepmperature is still around 35F or so in these
days.

bikoro child

Hi thanks for posting your technique i'm sure it works in Z8 too...I tested a protection for my basjoo and all seems ok today ...let's see what happen in the next times...

__________________


Ivan

JoeReal

Hi Chong!
I bend down all the leaves along the same way as the fruiting stalk or bloom. I would pull them to line up neatly with the main stalk. If the bloom is pointing up and has not yet curved down, that would have been the easiest job. Some petioles would break but not cut, and that is okay. I am after them for natural insulation.

JoeReal

That is great setup there yourself asacomm! And yours looked very neat. I got lazy, so I just used the leaves instead and bundled them up around the fruiting stalk. If there are no bloom or fruits, i would leave all the leaves as they are to provide natural insulation. I would then remove the leaves only when the danger of frosts are over, like consistently above 38 deg F as the lows.

It should be exciting to see what's inside those, come spring time. Don't forget to post pics of your experiment. I also did a setup similar to yours, where I covered the bloom of ornamental bananas. Will show pic of the opened part later.

Meanwhile, I am looking for blue plastic to wrap the banana fruits. I have birds that eat fruits and wouldn't like to share my bananas with them.

JoeReal

Thanks for sharing us results of your trials!