benjib98

hello everyone. me and my partner have a container grown banana plant, about of 2 years old, really nice considering we have bought it as a very small plant. since then we changed the pots twice as the plant has grown, the last just recently (40cm pot) and since the plant started to show rough edges and its leaves starting to dry out.
The plant was never on direct sun light, but recently after the pot change we moved it next to the window, so maybe it has caused it to "burn". When replaced to the new pot, we had to cut some of its roots, as another small banana started to grow next to the big one and their roots mangled together. After this the plant started to behave visibly "ill", after some of its leaves were accidentally crushed, resulting sliced leaves and now it is almost as it has been burned by something hot, its leaves showing dark, dry patches, even in the centre, where new leaves grow out.
I have attached some images to my gallery, hope someone can help an advise what to do and how to save our banana plant.

Michael_Andrew

One thing you can check for is to look under the leaves and see if you can see tiny white specks that are moving as the damage may be spider mites. There is usually some webbing created by the mites if they are present. They are really small so I use a jewelers loupe to help see. I've only had problems with the two spotted mite which has two dark spots on their back.

Michael

chong

No, that is not burned. But because you cut some of the roots, those that were cut ceased to provide nutrients to the leaf, causing the remaining roots to spread out their resources. And because there weren't as much root to supply them as before, the fringes of the leaves are not satisfied, hence, they die out. Since you want to have the plant grow more roots than leaves, after "root pruning" you needed to place the plant in only a warm, medium bright area, with high humidity.

Putting it in a bright area will cause the leaves to naturally accelerate photosynthesis. Just like a car, this will require a lot of (fuel) moisture in their system to accomplish this, and since there is not enough due to the missing roots, the nutrients only go so far in "mileage", and the remaining leaf ends dry out.

To begin with, since you were moving the plant to a bigger container, there was no need to trim the roots, regardless of entanglement. The roots have their "assigned" destination within the plant. Because the mother plant and the pups are all connected, they draw nutrients from each other. Had you wanted to separate the pup from the mother, then all you needed to do was divide the pup from the mother, taking great care so that damage to the roots is minimal. Here again, naturally, some collateral damage will occur to the roots. After re-potting, place plants in a warm, medium bright area, and high humidity as earlier mentioned.

just j

looks like a humity issue mine look like that after i keep them in the house over winter

benjib98

We live in a flat and our plant is in the lounge, although we moved it to the bedroom. Over the winter the banana behaved well, especially that the room temperature wasn't too high, so I guess the latest outside temperature jump had caused some major change in the room temperature - especially that we live on the top floor and a typical summer day is very very hot. I am not sure how could I provide more humidity for the banana and wondering if often water spraying the leaves could help a bit? It looks like in a short period we will have a handful of plants, as after separating and moving the 2 plants to a bigger pot, we just spot that another 2 small bananas appeared to grow from the side of the large: that is now 4 plants!

Adorkable

To provide more humidity for your plant you can place a tray or saucer underneath your plant and fill it with gravel or rocks then put enough water in it to just cover the gravel or rocks. My banana seems to love it =)

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sandy0225

Chong is right. with root pruning you reduce the area that the plant can take up moisture. If you don't reduce the top accordingly, even if you put it in the same place, it would have done that. Since you reduced the roots and also put that in a brighter place, that has a similar effect on the plant as if you cut off even more roots. So I'd recommend putting it back where you had it, or at least a little less bright of a location so it can regrow roots.
btw, root pruning and humidity go hand in hand. If you prune roots, provide more humidity in the atmosphere, not more water in the pot. That will cause the plant to lose moisture less quickly.
The other corrective measure you can take is to reduce the leaf area. Cut every leaf in half until the new emerging leaves don't show stress.

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Sandy Burrell



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