What has to be the most tenacious summer in long memory is at last loosening its grip, and we are facing something resembling the fall.
The race to unearth sweaters from the dark recesses of the closet — woolens now more wrinkled than a bloodhound’s visage — must stir in the gardener something of a panic.
A week ago, all those tropical plants looked as if they would grow on forever. Now, they are beginning to feel exposed. For those of us without a greenhouse or sunroom, the choice is stark. We can throw them on the compost pile, let them overwinter in the ground and see whether they return (an option for dahlias and cannas, but not much else), or we can store them dormant indoors. The last treatment awaits my three banana plants, now leafy, four to six feet tall and impressive after five months in containers.
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Banana plants are valuable in a number of ways. Apart from their magnificent foliage, they make gardening through a hot, soggy summer more congruous and bearable. Put it this way: Would you prefer to see a banana plant grow before your very eyes, or watch a currant bush drop its leaves?
But bananas are valuable in the plain old money sense, too. In May, when I was searching for plants, I found a rural garden center known for its annuals and was aghast to find a banana plant in a modest pot for $33. I emailed my go-to tropicals guy, “Boca” Joe Seamone, and asked whether I was getting ripped off. No, came back the response; the trendy retail garden centers closer to the city are likely to charge much more, he said.
This turned out to be so. I was in one of the centers the next day, where banana plants had migrated from the rough and ready summer annual and herb section to the tony indoor houseplant section. Here, I could purchase the last banana plant for $65. I made a hasty retreat through the ranks of Mercedes SUVs. I may have been bananas, but I wasn’t nuts.
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My last quest was to a retail nursery in Virginia that sells annuals in multi-cell packs — remember those? The plants are much cheaper than annuals grown in six-inch pots and give the gardener the pleasure of raising robust plants while saving money. There’s an idea. Anyway, I found my banana plants in one-gallon pots, each for less than $9.
I put them into bigger containers with lots of enriched soil — the biggest being a 24-inch black plastic pot used to grow nursery trees. At season’s end, the growth of this one in particular has been phenomenal — these plants just want to put on biomass. I know gardeners who hack them right back to bring them indoors because the entire plant is too heavy to shift after digging. People call them trees, but they are enormous perennial herbs that grow from rhizomes or bulblike corms.
The plants come in different sizes and varieties, but the only one that will make it reliably through a Mid-Atlantic winter is the Japanese hardy banana, Musa basjoo, and then only in its roots. Some gardeners can’t quite believe that it will resprout in May, so they put chicken wire around it and pile on leaves and straw. Boca Joe says this is unnecessary.
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But for more tender bananas such as mine, how would he recommend storing them?
After removing the leaves, he takes a tree saw to the main stem, cutting it at an arbitrary six feet or so above the roots, and then digs it up with a shovel. As with a palm tree, the root ball is quite small for the size of the top growth. He makes sure he keeps its soil clinging to it — this helps keep the corm sufficiently hydrated through the winter.
Washing the plant will do it no favors — you need the soil collar, and trapping moisture could lead to rot. He then puts it in a big cardboard box or heavy-duty trash bag and leans it against a basement wall.
You need to find a place to keep it that will be above 40 degrees but below 65 degrees. A cool basement or garage is ideal, in light or dark. These are also ideal environments for overwintering dahlias, elephant ears and brugmansias. “It’s like storing onions,” he said. “Too warm and too dry and they’ll shrivel up, too wet and they’ll rot.”
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He’ll check the banana roots periodically to see whether the soil is still surrounding the corm. If not, he’ll add dry potting mix, just to keep the roots from desiccating.
When it’s time to plant, in early May, he will cut back the stalk a couple of feet because the old wound will have callused and constricted new leaf growth.
There lies an urge in all banana growers to cultivate as big a plant as you can. Saving them from year to year is an effective way to do this, but just as important is to keep them well nourished and watered when they’re growing.
I kept mine watered but not fed during the summer and could see obvious differences in vigor based on the amount and nature of their soil.
Boca Joe, who lives in Milton, Del., has developed a simple but faithfully observed routine. Once a week, he fills his hose-end sprayer with a mix of fish emulsion and an all-purpose fertilizer and sprays his bananas and other tropicals liberally, even in a year of deluge. (He grows them in a discrete border rather than in pots.)
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His banana plant named Ice Cream (sometimes called Blue Java) reached 16 feet, and his basjoo exceeded 12 feet. My favorite banana remains the Red Abyssinian, with its wine-colored stalks and leaf veins and enormous leaves. Maybe my next spring banana quest will turn one up at a price I can afford. No matter if not; I now feel part of the banana fraternity. While my plants slumber this winter, I shall be working on my Tarzan jungle call.
More from Lifestyle:
The showy dahlia stages a comeback
The growing season may be almost over, but the gardener’s work is not done
Looking back at a hot, soggy mess of a growing season
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