wxman

We had high winds here today and they uprooted one of my musa orinocos. I was going to leave them in the ground until the first frost, but since it was uprooted, I decided to move ahead with my winter plan now since it's only a matter of a few weeks until frost.

I bought a 18 gallon storage tote from Walmart (they are cheap!) and drilled drainage holes in the bottom. I made up a really light and airy soil mix of potting soil, perlite and wood chips. Dug the orinocos up, washed the ground soil off the corm and roots and potted all 3 into the storage tote. I then cut off the leaves and cut one of them down to a more manageable height. I don't want them exceeding 8 feet inside during the winter. I'm going to drag them outside on warm sunny days until winter is here and bring them in at night. Once it's too cold to go outside I have an area of my basement that I set up with 35000 lumens of light. The temperature down there will be 65-70 all winter.

I watered the soil good today, and I won't water it again until the top inch or two are dry. Good plan? I plan on doing the same thing with my ensete maurelii and musa basjoo on Sunday. The reason I'm not storing them dormant is I don't really have a spot that stays 45-50 degrees all winter and I don't want to lose half my pseudostem due to it drying out or withering away. Here is a picture. The one I cut back has already pushed a half inch tonight.

palmtree

Ouch, Sorry to hear that they were damaged, but at least they look nice and healthy! At least the season is almost over anyway. I think you have a good plan. Also watch out for spider mites.
Good luck! Next summer they look like they are going to put out a huge amount of growth!

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Location: New York City, zone 7b

LilRaverBoi

Lookin' good! Looks like that should work out just fine for ya! I reiterate the spider mites mentioning from above....hate those F*$%ers.....one of my alocasias already has them! And yeah, dormant overwintering is over-rated....then again, I talked trash about someone in STL that had a banana that they overwintered and it didn't do much all summer, but I just drove by and noticed it had a bloom on it!!!! I'm so jealous!!

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wxman

Anyone try this stuff for mites?

Opentip.com: Bonide Products Inc P Houseplant Systemic Granules 8 Ounce - 951/958

sunfish

It's a systemic. Probably not recommended for edibles

wxman

I'm never going to get edible fruit here. I'm growing the different bananas for their ornamental value. So, if I'm not eating the fruit, the insecticide above should take care of any mite problem?

timmko

I was told that a humidifier will work wonders on keeping the mites away. I did that last year and it worked great along with the occasion misting. I bought a pump sprayer this year and it will make it a lot easier to mist the larger banana's I have inside.

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eric27

Talk about those winds. I totally understand. They were bad here too. They tore every single one of my plants and knocked my smallish Black Thai out of its pot. I tried the humidifier thing for spider mites too. It worked. The only other thing that ever really worked was to clean the leaves off with water. But is isn't the most practical thing to do and you have to keep doing it every few days. But sometimes it was the only option I had until I could get the plants back outside.