wxman

What are your ideas on this:

I have some baby musa basjoo's that I planted. All their existing leaves got sunburned and they are wilting off. Temperatures are supposed to be in the 50s for highs for the foreseeable future here after tomorrow. Ugh, spring in Wisconsin sucks sometimes. I was thinking of taking a gallon milk jug and cutting the bottom off to make a "greenhouse" and put it over each plant on sunny days to make a warm microclimate to encourage them to start putting out leaves. A few plants are down to just stems with a really tiny baby leaf emerging. I want to speed this up as much as possible so I can get some decent sized plants this summer. I'm thinking this milk jug idea will boost temperatures into the 70s or 80s inside the enclosure even though its only in the 50s outside.

magicgreen

Hi WXman!
Iam still new to growing bananas(see below)......but I would'nt put any container over my Musa at this time of year; unless..........it was a surprise spring frost for what region they would be growing in. And then it would be a sheet or garbage cans, or some such.
Hope this helps! Good Luck and keep reading about the banana!

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(Started growing bananas July 2007)
(Zone 6)

mrbungalow

I have tried this with poor results;

It seems the temperature of the soil is much more important than temperature of the air. It's kind of like sunbathing on top of Mt. Everest. The sun is strong, but the snow you lie on is cooold!! I would think warming up local areas of soil is difficult.
Untill soil-temperatures warm up this won't help much.

Also, there's a risk of the GH getting too hot and yellowing the leaves. Plants also dislike still air, the reason why you should use a small fan in a GH.

Erlend

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frankthetank

You showed up! Only thing i can think of is if it is the cold soil slowing/halting growth, then container them until mid/late May and then drop them in...? I was digging craters today planting trees and the soil is still on the cool side, although warming up from the last deep holes i dug.