DebCA

New to musas and working on a backyard plan. We have some pretty windy weather in both winter and summer due to our valley layout. I'm planning on leaving my musas in ground year round. I'm going to plant M. basjoos in one section of our backyard along a fence line, sandwiched between two houses and backyards (I'm looking for a tropical look plus screening from backyard neighbor's house). This location should be fine as it gets a southerly exposure throughout most of the day, particularly during the long summer days and it is shielded from the winds by our house.

At this point I'm more concerned about the second potential location. It gets a south/west exposure during most of the day. The side yard is between two houses and pretty much is a funnel for winds, which get pretty strong. We have a 5-foot fence that will block some of the wind until the plant reaches a height above that, which from what I understand the M. basjoos will achieve fairly quickly. Should I expect shredded leaves? I'd like the plants to look nice and not all raggy particularly during the summer/fall when we'll get the most use out of our backyard. Anyone with any experience with windy conditions and M. basjoos?

I've considered planting something else there instead, like Canna musiforia grande, which look like they might have stronger leaves and would be better suited to provide the height but hold up to the winds. ( http://www.brentandbeckysbulbs.com/s....php?sku=61-33 ) Any thoughts? BTW I'm not advocating this place in anyway just thought the plant picture and info might be helpful.

STEELVIPER

Sorry, but basjoo's shred easy.Your first planting location sounds good to me. There is just no getting around shredded leaves in a windy location. That goes for many types of bananas. There are some bananas that have more durable leaves.But with the strong winds we get in CA sometimes, they are also bound to shred.My basjoo took a beating this winter so far. Windy just about everyday a few weeks back. All i can say is plant them in the most wind-protected area of your yard.Pray for no winds.

__________________

jackdarook

I know nothing about bananas (yet) but one thing about wind is that it does not like to hit solid objects like walls and fences. When it hits the obstruction it creates a kind of vortex on the other side, how far out i think depends on the height of the fence/wall. This can damage plants that dont even have their head over the fence yet. Something that lets some wind through avoids this problem. Not sure if this is relevant but felt compelled to try and add some value when people are being so helpful in my attempts to go bananas!

R, aka jackdarook

JoeReal

Bananas generally don't like the long blistering hot summers and the cold winters of California. They don't grow that much if at all during these times, although they grow like crazy from mid-spring to mid-summer.

Anyway, I am in Davis, same zone as you do as I also get the maritime influence. We also get strong winds that frustrates me.

There's not much you can do about winter, short of getting a greenhouse, and the strong winds which simply shred each and every banana leaf you've got, but you can do something during the summer, which can alleviate your wind problems too. Ideally for the bananas to keep growing strong during the summer is some shade 60% but the same sunshine hours, and lots of water and adequate drainage.

My recommendation is first to plant only cold hardy dwarf varieties. I don't find M. basjoo's blooms as attractive as the others. There are bananas as cold hardy as M. basjoo, that are dwarf and will bear edible fruits from time to time and doesn't require any more care than what you would do with basjoo. For example, in my yard, my Dwarf Brazilian is the cold hardiest, even cold hardier than my California Gold, followed by Dwarf Orinoco and then Raja Puri. I am trying out again the sweetheart banana, an is very promising, this is the more cold hardy amongst the dessert type cavendish bananas. The fact is, all of their pseudostems remained intact even when we hit 20 deg F for a prolonged time, and several nights of below 24 deg F, and more than 35 days of frosty nights. As long as you RESTRAIN yourself with such willpower from chopping off the top of your bananas every winter, you will be a professional banana fruit grower in our area. The dry leaves and the dead sheaths of the pseudostem will HELP A LOT in protecting your bananas during the winter. Chopping the tops off will make them naked to the cold and reset their cycle, minimizing your chances for blooms. Cut off the leaves when the frosty nights are over, by looking at 10 day forecast after your average annual date that the frosty nights are supposed to be over.

Dwarf bananas are easier to cut off the leaves, and the blooms are at eye level, such wonderful things to appreciate. The big plus is that the shortest varieties in your yard are usually out of reach by the shredding power of strong winds.

For one of the best fruit bearing shade trees that allow some sunlight during the summer and could temper down the strength of the winds are Japanese plums and Pluots. If you go with pluots, that's another type of fruit that can beat the taste of Apricots and plums and are quite reliable producer in your area. These plants when pruned properly, allows some sunshine through, to an ideal of 35% which bananas love during the hot summers. I would plant one in front of bananas and another in the back when the bananas are in the "wind tunnel". The problem with this method is that depending on the orientation of your house with respect to the prevailing strong winds, your bananas could be out of view. What I did is plant some wind barriers like citruses and pluots in the north and east side, where our strongest winds come from, and the bananas are still in full view from the kitchen. When temperatures exceed 100 deg F, I simply drape over with white breathable polyester fabric until those days are over in the summer. But when a freak wind comes from the south, then it shreds the leaves of my tall cultivars (greater than 8 ft). My Dwarf Brazilian and Dwarf Orinoco leaves will usually survive the wayward wind powered shredders.

JoeReal

Surely you are going to learn from this great forum! Welcome R!

One of the strongly recommended man-made barriers are the ones which allow some wind to pass through, like the fences with small gaps in-between. Most empirical studies find the ideal to be 40% gaps. This will minimize the strength of vortices in the downwind side.

First of all, we have to define what our idea of wind protection is. To most people, it is stopping the wind, which is impossible unless you enclose your object totally. When you talk to engineers, mostly it is about wind speed reduction or diverting the flow of the wind. If in our context, we define wind protection as wind speed reduction in this discussion, then I would say that wind protection extends from 2 to 8 times the height of the barrier depending upon the roughness coefficient from where upwind has gone through, and the type of barrier you have.

Assuming you used a barrier with a porosity of 40% (60% solid, 40% gaps), where most plant barriers fall into this category, and let us say you have 10 ft tall barriers, 50% wind speed reduction or more is from the barrier extending to 80 ft. For a 10% wind speed reduction, the protection is up to 250 ft away.

JoeReal

In our case, even a 50% wind speed reduction is still enough to shred all the leaves of our tall (> 8 ft) bananas.

JoeReal

Oh yes, I have confirmed it. Giving tips is mostly a one way affair. You get nothing in return, and should expect nothing from this. I would prefer debate than this. It is like hitting the OK button on Microsoft's application. I will have to tone down for a while now.

jackdarook

JoeReal, sorry if i have committed a breach of board protocol and thank you for the elaboration on wind issues.

Right now I cant give any tips on bananas but if you want to know about cows, sheep, monkey puzzle trees, rain, dark dreary days, cold wet grey clay soil, making hay, silage, irish mythology, poor spelling; i know a little bit about all of them.

Hope the sun is shining on you today, it just stopped snowing here!

R, aka jackdarook

dragr13

Goodness Joe, i'm surprised at you! Most of the people here that NEED tips don't have any to give back! and while it may dissapoint you when you don't receive replies right away, try to keep in mind that not everyone can be online every day. there are lots of other people reading these posts and gaining information from you... i've read your posts all over this site and regularly learn something i hope to use in the future. so instead of getting upset, remember how helpful you are to all of us who you NEVER even hear from, and keep sharing!

If you want to get something back for your knowledge, i can offer mechanical advice on lots of things, mainly SeaDoo's. Not very helpful with bananas, though.

Jack - i'd love to hear about some irish mythology; i realize this is not the place, but i'm interested.

JoeReal

sorry to vent out. But it was supposed to be directed the original poster who did not even respond to my suggestions, if those were repulsive, logical or okay, and the irony is we even are at equivalent climes, and then went ahead and ask again in other forum topics, and it is frustrating to answer again in those other threads.

I do apologize to others who may have interpreted these in a negative way, but nope, I was not asking for tips back but just a few responses especially from the original person posting the requests ...

jeffreyp

Raja puris in south florida came through with flying colors through 3 hurricanes. I would say this qualifies them as wind tolerent!

DebCA

Shocked to read the post today and find that apparently I was the target of some of JoeReal's anger. Maybe something was edited too??

First off, Joe I DO appreciate yours and everyone else's feedback, especially to questions I pose. Actually I DID come to this post after seeing all the info on the fence and tree/shade comments and spent about 15 minutes or so composing my response (which BTW did thank people for helping out). After spending all the time typing my reply and hitting Submit, I got a message saying that I wasn't logged on!! I know in fact I was, because had posted to other threads on the site. I lost everything I had posted. This problem happens to me all the time when I'm on here. I don't know if there's a time out issue, or whether it's the browser I use, Safari, or because I'm a new member and my post has to get approved or something but I simply ran out of time on the computer and had to make dinner so gave up with the intention of coming back and re-composing what I had tried sending earlier.

I'm not a rude person I'll assure you. And before too much time goes by I'm posting this and will try to come back later, probably this weekend and try again. Sorry if I offended anyone by not getting back sooner. And Joe I remember commenting in my original post that I was happy to find someone in my exact circumstances--zone and wind--who posted.

DebCA

Thanks for the comments on the fencing and tree suggestions. Our Association fences are the typical 5-foot vertically slatted wooden fences seen all over (heard they are called 7-year fences because that’s about as long as they last). There is some gap between the vertical boards as they are angled but I doubt they allow much thru air flow as the gaps are caused more by the unevenness of the boards than anything else. We can put up lattice at the fence top if approved by the Board, but since the lattice is open I doubt it will offer much in the way of wind resistance. To make matters worse, we have a two-story house which is next to another two-story house so in effect when the winds blow our side yard is in a wind tunnel and who knows what kind of air patterns get created with the fence forcing air up and around. I knew this area was going to be a landscaping problem yet I very much want some tropical vertical interest there at that spot.

The tree suggestions are good ones (BTW hadn’t even heard of a pluot before), and I have considered planting a tree in front of the fence. Unfortunately we have a short setback to the road and the side yard between houses is somewhat narrow making most trees too large for the space and encroaching on the neighbor’s side. We also have a walkway and gate to the back yard at that side, reducing the available space. We do get some shade protection in the summer afternoons from the house next door which is a two-story and on the western side of us; although it doesn’t help from the wind perspective. The other side of the coin is that if we block the wind too much, the side yard, especially during the warm spring/hot summer-fall months, will feel like an oven. It’s not a great area but the best location for our BBQ island and I’m trying my best to continue the tropical look to that side of the house.

I should mention that I am planning on planting some shorter musas, thinking Red Dwarf, and maybe either the Dwarf Brazilian or Orinoco, in that area. I still really want something with height above the fence top though. I read somewhere that the ‘Ice Cream’ (which sounds yummy to me) was wind tolerant, and wonder if it would be a better choice to try than a Basjoo?

It’s sounding like I’ll either have to settle for shredded leaves...or plant something else more wind tolerant but tropical looking in that location--which is why I thought maybe the giant banana Canna I mentioned originally might be a possible subsitute for the taller bananas. I have no working knowledge of this plant either or how it would do in my situation.

Back to the conversation in posts above, I do read try to read everyone’s comments, especially on the threads I start, so if I don’t respond shortly, please assume there’s a good reason why I haven’t replied.

Also if anyone knows why I keep having to re-log in when posting, let me know. As you can tell sometimes my posts are long-winded or I get interrupted while composing so, I just figure the system times me out. The page still acknowledges my sign-in name and sometimes I can get back to what I wrote and select copy it and then re-log in again and try posting again. I don’t understand what is going on. Sometimes my efforts to recapture my text doesn’t work and I loose everything. Pretty frustrating. Am I doing something wrong? I composed this offline and copied this here but I think I should be able to just compose it directly here without problems.

JoeS475

I know how you feel - although I'm for some reason always logged on when I return to the site - often when I write a long reply to a thread, after hitting send I lose what I wrote for no reason (that I can explain), or do something dumb like hit ESC by mistake as I reach for my drink right before posting my reply... most of what people read must be a shorter, rushed version of what I first intended.

Must remember to copy and paste what I write before I post it, just in case!

~Joe

__________________

MediaHound

I'm investigating what's up with this logging out bug with the website.
In the meantime, yes, please always copy your posts to your clipboard before you hit submit. This way, if you need to log back in, you can just paste your reply right back where you left off and hit submit.
If you stay idle too long, you are logged out. I will check the time limitations and other sensitivity things and see if I can get it better.
The new Internet Explorer, 7.0 if you use it, may not let you right click and click "copy" - so if thats your browser, please become familiar with the highlight text and then hold control and hit c
(ctrl-c)
If you then ctrl-v (hold control and hit v) it will paste it wherever your cursor is, so if your post was lost, go back to the textarea and put your cursor in it, ctrl-v and then click to submit it once again...

__________________
Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

MediaHound

Just to update on the logging out issue -
I have made two big changes that should put an end to the woes created by staying idle too long.
One - I have changed the website so that by default, the "remember me" checkbox is checked when you log in.
and Two - I have changed the cookie timeout from 900 seconds to 3600 seconds before your session will timeout.
This should put an end to trying to submit a well thought out post and getting an error message that you must log in instead of a success message.
About to post this in site news, too...
cheers

__________________
Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

DebCA

Thanks MediaHound. It should help (although I don't like to have my computer remember passwords so never click this feature) and I'm glad that I won't have to type so fassstttt now!