Banana Cold Hardy is Musa basjoo

-
The tropical look that Banana Trees, Musa Basjoo, give our gardens always gets attention from visitors.  Also called Japanese Fiber Bananas, they are cold hardy to 20-degrees below zero, withstanding our winters quite nicely. 

In warmer climates Japanese Banana will grow to 18-feet tall. Locally, they seem to mature at 8 to 10 feet with 4-to-6 foot long leaves. The new leaves in the photo that are still round are called cigar leaves until they unroll.

If your plants flower and make fruit, remember that are not grocery store bananas so they are not edible. The flowers are self-fertile; there is no need to plant male and female plants.

Musa Basjoo spreads like a lily, by making offset pups that grow over the summer. To divide, wait until a pup is a foot tall, then remove the soil between the mother plant and the pup so you can dig it out with some root attached. You can plant the pups into containers and protect them over the winter or take your chances and just transplant them into a new garden location.

Give your Banana Trees full sun and regular water during drought periods and they will reward you will a gorgeous display to enjoy until the first hard freeze.

When the leaves fall to the ground in winter leave them in place to cover the roots to protect them from a hard freeze. If you want to mulch the plants more, apply several inches of bark or pine needles.

Cold hardy Banana makes a great patio container plant though it will have to be protected over the winter as containers have colder soil than the ground. Some gardeners wrap the trunks with burlap or bubble wrap up to 2-feet before high the first killing frost, and prune off any damaged leaves and stem.

The pseudostem trunk is used to make clothing fibers in China.  The plant genus, Musa, is named for a first century B.C. physician, Antonia Musa.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moldy Tulip Bulbs

-
Image
Moldy tulip bulbs are a big disappointment when you are hoping to fill a bed or some pots. It is not that unusual for their skins to have a bit of penicillin mold but these are beyond that tad bit stage. Mold penetrating tulip bulb  Mold on emerging tulip bulb growth  So, what to do? The plant references say to throw them out and buy new ones but I already spent $22 for 50 of these white tulip beauties. First, they got a soak in 1% bleach solution in the kitchen sink in the hope that the bleach would stop the mold from continuing to grow without killing the life force in the bulb itself. After a good slosh around, I wiped them off to see how much damage was beneath the blue and black.  This tulip bulb is soft to the touch and there is little chance it will thrive in the soil. This basal root on these have been ruined by mold. The final step I took to try to salvage part of them  was to spray them thoroughly with fungicide.  They are all planted in the
Read more

Propagate Begonia Stem Cuttings in water - Cane-like Angel Wing Begonia

-
Image
Propagating by stem cuttings is just about the easiest way to make more begonias for next summer's garden. During the fall, I regularly trim off 3-node long cuttings and put them into the growing pots where they take root. Now that cold weather has arrived, I root the stem cuttings in a vase of water. It's a great way to produce more pots of Begonias for next summer's garden. Water the plant well the day before. Take a cutting about 4-inches long, with 3 nodes, from a healthy stem. Use a perfectly clean container. Rinse the container with a drop of bleach if you are uncertain about its spotlessness. Remove all but the top leaf or two. There should be no leaves in the water. The cutting should  have a healthy leaf node at the bottom. Don't leave a stub below the node. Place the cutting into the water, and place the container out of the sun. In a couple of weeks, you will see new roots beginning to form. Check the water periodically to make sure it is still f
Read more

Create Nesting Areas for Birds and Wildlife

-
Image
From the website, Choose Natives , this lovely and instructive article helped remind me to continue to increase the amount of habitat and nesting that we provide in our garden. Many, though not all, are native or considered to be native in Oklahoma. So, I did a little research on each recommended plant and provided a link to more information. You'll see the plant name in italics - those are my links for your edification. Here's the post Derek Stoner, Project Coordinator for the Delaware Nature Society, helped restore the 860-acre Middle Run Natural Area by “intensive habitat management”, including planting 12,000 trees and shrubs.  His lecture, ‘ Native Plants for Nesting Birds: Connecting Flora and Fauna’,  given to a group of enthusiasts at the Millersville Native Plant Conference   in Pennsylvania, focused on his observations. Here are Derek’s landscaping recommendations for attracting birds: Plant shrubs in clusters (“habitat circles”) that will create the dense
Read more