Rotten Musa Basjoo

keith kent · Joined: 16 Aug 2007 Posts: 25

I have a large banana plant in the garden it has been protected with straw
then wrapped with fleece.No water has got to the plant as the straw is bone
dry but the stem has completely rotted to ground.
Will the plant regrow from the roots ?
Keith
Nottingham,UK

Archived from group: uk>rec>gardening

Sacha · Joined: 17 Feb 2008 Posts: 30

On 25/2/08 20:50, in article wSFwj.3763$ab5.1520@newsfe1-win.ntli.net,
"keith kent" wrote:

> I have a large banana plant in the garden it has been protected with straw
> then wrapped with fleece.No water has got to the plant as the straw is bone
> dry but the stem has completely rotted to ground.
> Will the plant regrow from the roots ?
> Keith
> Nottingham,UK
>
>
You have nothing to lose by waiting to see what happens. There's always a
slim chance the roots have survived. However, a lot depends on what has
happened to the roots, not the stem. If they've been sodden and cold your
chances aren't good.
I started to answer this and then spoke to my husband about our Musa
Basjoos. We grow none in the garden and we're in S Devon though not too far
from Dartmoor so it's very wet here. We have several, in pots, in a
polytunnel and despite temps that have not gone much below -2 for long, Ray
thinks - thinks - we've lost ours. This could just be the horrible, damp
weather we've had because heaters come on during the cold nights, if needed
and of course, such plants don't get watered in winter. Who knows? The
Ensetes ventricosum, which we also take in over winter, look just fine...
It's lovely to experiment with plants if one can afford to do so but
sometimes you really do have to play to your strengths or accept that plants
will be lost in wet and cold.
I do hope you find yours have survived.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'

echinosum · Joined: 26 Feb 2008 Posts: 1

keith kent;776207 Wrote:
> the stem has completely rotted to ground.
> Will the plant regrow from the roots ?
Musa Basjoo is pretty root hardy, and commonly they do resprout, unless
the soil has suffered an unusually sharp frost by the standards of
lowland Britain. I hope you mulched well around the base.
Keeping a banana pseudostem alive in your garden through the winter in
Britain can be done, but it isn't easy, and depends on you being
somewhere well sheltered from frost. Another option is to lift them and
over-winter in a heated green house, which is what they do at a
municipal garden near where I am writing from (Charing Cross, London).
But that can be a big job.
But at least if they do regrow each year, and you feed and water them
well, you should get an expanding clump of them, and that can be very
attractive. Some people prefer it like that. If you keep the pseudostem
alive for a few years, it will flower and die.

--
echinosum

PK · Joined: 01 Jan 2008 Posts: 14

"echinosum" wrote in message @gardenbanter.co.uk...
>
> Keeping a banana pseudostem alive in your garden through the winter in
> Britain can be done, but it isn't easy, and depends on you being
> somewhere well sheltered from frost. Another option is to lift them and
> over-winter in a heated green house, which is what they do at a
> municipal garden near where I am writing from (Charing Cross, London).
> But that can be a big job.

I've had mine unwrapped this winter (Sheltered spot, but by no means frost
free, London SW19) and the four stems are just beginning to grow away.

I've kept them that way since the clump size/multiple stems made wrapping
impractical - they tend to look pretty scrappy in the spring and the outer
rotted leaf bases need to be stripped away, but they survive. I did it the
first time when the original stem got too large, I left in un wrapped with
the intention of cutting to ground level, but is just grew away as normal
and flowered!

pk

keith kent · Joined: 16 Aug 2007 Posts: 25

"PK" wrote in message @bt.com...
> "echinosum" wrote in message
> @gardenbanter.co.uk...
>>
>> Keeping a banana pseudostem alive in your garden through the winter in
>> Britain can be done, but it isn't easy, and depends on you being
>> somewhere well sheltered from frost. Another option is to lift them and
>> over-winter in a heated green house, which is what they do at a
>> municipal garden near where I am writing from (Charing Cross, London).
>> But that can be a big job.
>
>
> I've had mine unwrapped this winter (Sheltered spot, but by no means frost
> free, London SW19) and the four stems are just beginning to grow away.
>
> I've kept them that way since the clump size/multiple stems made wrapping
> impractical - they tend to look pretty scrappy in the spring and the outer
> rotted leaf bases need to be stripped away, but they survive. I did it the
> first time when the original stem got too large, I left in un wrapped with
> the intention of cutting to ground level, but is just grew away as normal
> and flowered!
>
> pk

Thanks all , i will keep my fingers crossed ,it is a big plant with big root
system hence it being in the garden.I got it from one of the show garden
sell offs at gardeners world show last year it was in a 2ft min pot which
was full of roots & very heavy.
Thanks Keith
Nottingham
>

Overwintering Musa Basjoo? Hi All! First year with this plant. Grown by a wall in a sheltered spot in Folkestone, Kent. It's about 5ft tall... Looking for tips on keeping it snug / dry over the coming winter. It's still green and growing but I know it will need care to get it throu

bananas (musa) Hello, I saw a DIY shop reducing some banana plants to clear. The problem is they are only identified on the shop label as "houseplant"! There is a small plastic card pushed into the soil but it simply says "musa". How can I go about identifying the varie

Basic repair of rotten wood Hello! Does anyone know of any other good sites on replacing rotten wood around windows? This house is 40 years old - mostly in good shape, but previous owners didn't keep the windows seals. Water has gotten in, followed by termites, et

Infinity SM Series Major Flaw? Hi, I have a set of Infinity SM80 speakers that have suddenly started to buzz after about 12 years. When I checked to see if someone had poked a hole in them I was horrified to find that the foam ring that attaches the polycarbonate (plastic) cone to the

Lever Cap Screw I bought a Stanley 9 1/2 block plane on ebay. What a mistake. The Lever Cap screw is to short and only catches by about a half turn of the threads and even then, I can't move the lever into the set position. I think what I need is a slightly longer sc