Musa Basjoo

There has been a lot of discussion lately over cordylines. They have taken a real hit and very few seem to have escaped damage at some level. And cordylines are meant to be quite hardy!

In the corner of my garden I have a green banana, Musa Basjoo, which was trimmed back and well wrapped up way back in October 2022.

With the cordylines doing so badly, when I unwrap my banana at the end of April/May, I'm expecting a pile of rotting mush! Surely there's no way it can escape damage, even though it's been wrapped.

Has anyone else started to unwrap theres yet, maybe in the south where it's a bit milder? Those who haven't unwrapped theres yet, are you, like me, expecting carnage?

 

I wrapped 2 stems a bit late after the freeze had started.
I noticed they are actually starting to grow already but lost a couple of feet in height.
The unwrapped stems are killed to the ground.

 

Mine grew very well last year, to such an extent that by the end of the summer it had pushed up five pups! So my hope is that the below ground root structure is really strong, and even though the trimmed down mother pseudo stem may have taken a beating I'm quietly confident my pups may produce the growth for 2023.

But the cordyline business has now left me unsure. It's getting to that time of the year now that sub zero night time temps and frosts are behind us, but this is the UK, anything can happen, so I plan on leaving it as late as possible to unwrap it.

 

I tend to gamble at this time of the year that frosts will be short and not long lived.
Sure an established basjoo can have its new growth caught by frost but it is very unlikely that the stems will get damaged.

 

They will shoot from the ground in a couple of months if they were established.

 

You mean they are in pots?
I doubt they will have survived December in pots.

 

Will have to dig mine out of the greenhouse and have a feel ooer.

 

Just a slight detour here, but still on bananas. I also had a red banana. This one was inside as they're not hardy at all. It reached about 7ft tall last year and maybe 4ft wide, it was becoming a problem.

So, around about the same time as I chopped back and wrapped my outdoor Musa Basjoo, I also chopped back my inside red one! All the leaves came off and all that was left was the thick pseudo stem, about 2ft tall. I stopped feeding and watered very lightly all through winter.

My drastic actions didn't stop it from growing, but it slowed it right down to a snails pace. It still managed to push up two new healthy leaves through winter. But then, a couple of weeks ago, just as the third leaf was showing, it stopped growing and the pseudo stem, over a two week period, began softening up. It was very squidgy, and then it just died! It puzzled me because it was recovering well from its heavy prune.

Could it have been a delayed reaction to the heavy pruning, or maybe something else?

 

I had an Ensete over wintering in the garage, it looked half decent but had mostly rotted at the base.

They are best kept fairly dry over winter.

 

I managed to save a couple of stems, the rest, in the clump, have died to the ground.

 

I wasn't going to unwrap mine for a few more weeks yet, but yesterday and today have been really nice weather so I released mine from its winter hibernation!

The pseudo stem was quite mushy at the top so I trimmed it down to where it hardens up. It could spring into life, who knows.

The most promising part were the 5 or 6 young pups it pushed up last year. The shoots look very alive and they are where I expect most activity to come from.