aanimate

HI!

Thanksgiving morning I woke up to find out that all my 9 bananas had all their
damaged by frost.
The same thing happened last year, but I was going to build a frost protecction this year. Unfortunatly, the "weather man" was wrong and what suppose to be a night with low 40s became 27.
If anybody can give me a tip how to take care of them now.
I cut off all dead leaves and wrapped them with frost blankets.
Can I just leave them like that all winter long, or I have to take the blakets off everyday? I did it last year and it was very difficult to do it everyday.
Please ,let me know if you guys have any ideas.

P.S. Don't trust weather.com

dcmoony

I'll was just thinking what to do with mine. The weather folks are calling for a hard freeze on Thursday 27 to 32 degrees. Bummer we have not even had a frost yet. I have been thinking of topping mine off then wraping them. However if I wrap them I plan to leave them wraped all winter. I might dig up the smaller one but have not commited myself on that.

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Darryl
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JoeReal

We have 2 separate nights that we had frost on the lawn and car windshields. So far, none of my bananas were damaged out there in the open. But it is only a matter of time when consecutive frosty nights would come for an extended stay. Then they'll be fried.

But it is unusually late this year, no real hard frosts yet, although it dipped to near 31 deg F. Usually, first week of November we get them already. It is nearing December, still no damages.

The best practice that I do is to let them be during the entire winter. The leaves will eventually die, serving as the cheapest frost blanket there is, if you are in zone 9 and above. If you remove the leaves, you will be exposing the pseudostems and they might die and bear you fruitless next year. Frost starts at the top, and the dead leaves are very good frost protection materials, naturally hanging and protecting the pseudostems. That is why after September, I stop removing dead leaves and sheaths from my bananas, in order to pile up the natural thermal protections.

Remove only the dead leaves in spring when the danger of the last frost is over. Once bananas started pushing out leaves at spring, I religiously remove any dead or brown sheath and leaves all the way to end of August, to maximize photosynthesis to increase fruit size and promote healthy growth. After that, it will be hands off for me until spring again. People in our area who cut the top part during the winter, thinking that this is the best protection there is, aside from keeping their sanity that it looked neat and tidy, well, they have the skinniest bananas in our area that very rarely bear fruits. Isn't it just wonderful that the best protection is the do nothing at all approach during the winter.

But this technique won't work properly if you are in zone 8 or below, better get a greenhouse or dig them up every winter and do the dormant storage in the crawl space of your house just like what Frank (bigdog) has been doing .