Central Midwest Gardening: Dayyyy-OOOOOOOOO It's time to bring in my banana trees, 1 by ericabelle

ericabelle wrote:
Hello! Not to but into the conversation here, but we have a musa basjoo (the hardy one), and I have seen reports of it hardy to zone 7 and reports of it hardy to zone 6 with lots of mulching (I am zone 6b, by the way). I bought one from the president of our master gardener's association during a fundraiser, and he said, after the leaves have drooped and turned brown in the fall, just cut the stalk down to about 1 foot, and mulch it heavily. We surround ours with a large chicken wire ring and mulch it with about a foot or so of leaves or wood mulch. Last year, we didn't get around to it, so it was completely uncovered; but it came back - I think all the snow we got over the winter saved it!
We also have the non-hardy type of bananas, and we just dig them up and don't worry about how much of the roots we unearth, just as long as we get the bulb. Don't know if that's right or not, but it's worked so far - maybe they would grow larger if we got more of the roots.
Pictured below is the hardy banana - we now have seven, after just a couple of years. The largest one is around 6 feet tall.