Can anyone help with advice about banana trees? We have two of them and need to know what to do to keep them over the winter. They were about five feet tall when we got them, and are now about twenty feet tall, although we never got any bananas. We are about an hour south of Chicago, and we want to get them out of the ground before any frost hits. The people that gave us the trees said to just dig them up and stick them in the crawl space, but we are not sure what to wrap them in or how much we need to cut down. Thanks for any help!
OK. Begin by cutting off the leaves at the point of the petioles (leaf stalks) where they touch the stem. Then dig the entire plants up (this is hard work - enlist burly friends), wrap them in burlap or frost-cloth (about 3-4 layers is good for Chicago), and put them in the crawlspace. Once the ground has thawed in the spring, pull them out and check for mushy spots, especially in the corm and at the crown of the plants; cut any out, then replant. I'd advise against cutting the trunks at all - if they made it to 20' tall, there might be flower buds inside, and if you cut those off, you're SOL. Do you know which cultivar of banana you're growing, by any chance?
Thank you, I'm not sure what type they are, is there any way to post a picture on here? The guy that gave them to us said they were three years old, and we would get bananas, but we have gotten nothing.
How To Attach Images You might be just at or before the point of flowering now - all the more reason to dig them up and put them into dormancy, because the fruit takes about 4-6 months to be produced and ripen. Have you noticed smaller leaves being produced by the plants? That's one of the signs that a flower is on its way.
