Trimming Banana Plant Rhizome Leaves to promote faster growth, Flower, Blossoms and Bananas

okay hey i'm out here first thing in the morning this is sam i'm the frugal hugo gardener i was just out here a little under two weeks ago and i trimmed back all these banana plants and since then they have a lot of growth and i'm gonna go ahead and trim them back again this morning and i'm gonna go ahead and show you how and tell you why so let's get on with it okay so i'm gonna go ahead and take a little walk around and as you can see the growth up here is right now we have one two three four five six seven seven five six seven seven leaves now the leaves come from the rising because that's the way bananas grow or rise them everything grows from the center and then stalks out up on the top low on the two weeks ago i had multiple leaves and i cut them back so there was just four on the larger ones and then the pups below i went ahead and did a separation video and i also went ahead and cut the leaves back a little under two weeks ago so since all the uppers right now have over five they have five six seven i'm gonna cut them back to five on the bigger ones on the smaller pups i'm gonna cut them back to about three we'll see how that looks in a minute but first i'm going to start on top i'm going to go ahead and trim these back i'm going to drop them to the ground and then once i'm done i'm going to go back up and chop them because it's chop and drop for fertilizer never waste any of your plants chop and drop it it adds nutrients back into the ground but it is a good thing to go ahead and keep removing you up the leaves on your plants a good rule of thumb is when you get five or more depends how quickly they grow cut one back so you just leave four this will put the plant in a growing stage it knows when you separate leaves that it has to grow more so that means it shoots up quicker and the base right here the base down below also gets thicker so it's growing thicker and it's growing taller now your banana plants sort of have a little brain they're a living plant and instinctively they know how many leaves going up it takes before they want to shoot out a blossom or a bud a flower that's going to create blossoms to turn into bananas now if you wanted to reach that stage quicker so you could have bananas you want to trim them if you don't care about them just leave all your leaves and let it grow naturally but it's still a good idea to trim off all the bottom ones when they brown instead of just leaving them to go wild it's good to have that breeze go through it's good to just not leave leave them alone so in my case i like trimming them all up that's my preference i like them to grow quicker i like them to be healthier so i fertilize a lot with chop and drop and i also use compost tea that i make and we'll get into that as well and it as a result i have a lot of pups on each of my plants now i separated some of them some of them had as much as six on there well when they're shooting out a lot of pups i don't separate them when they're small i let them get to a decent size and a decent thickness that gives the corm on the bottom of the puck a chance to sprout out a lot of roots and then when i go ahead and separate it from the parent plant it's it's off to a good race and then i could pot them or i could plant them or do whatever i want to do with them but that's how you multiply your banana plants and send more energy to the parent plant when you trim off the branches okay when you trim off the leaves or fronds or rhizomes that are coming out you know you could use the terminology you want it allows for more energy to get up there well when you go ahead and separate the pups see those pups are coming out of the corn of the parent plant so it those those pups are taking energy from the parent plant so when you separate them all of a sudden the parent plants gonna have more energy to grow up and go ahead and produce a bud that's gonna produce your blossoms that's gonna produce your banana plants or that's going to produce your bananas and also it's very important to have them well watered i planted a lot of mine on a pond that i dug just for this purpose and i use the hugelkultur method on just about all of my banana plants and then also i fertilize a lot they need a lot of fertilizer so once a week or twice a week when they're fruiting i go ahead and fertilize with compost tea that i make at a mexican sunflower and country bakken 14 and i'll show you how i do that here shortly too so anyway let's get on with this video okay you have to start somewhere so i'm going to start with this banana plant right here and i have to face the camera so it's not going to get the whole banana plant down from the bottom up if i got the whole banana plant in there the camera will be far away and the pond's there so that ain't going to happen as it is now i got to make sure my camera don't fall into the water which it has in the past so with that said i got my machete right here which i like using i also have a pair of scissors you could do it either way but when they get taller or a machete gives you that extra two foot of reach where the scissors won't so this is what i'm gonna do i'm gonna count one two three four five six seven there is five six seven there's seven on there so i want to cut it back to four so i'm going to remove three so this right here you always want to look for the bottom that shoots out okay i just bought a brand new machete and it's not doing good let me go get my other okay got rid of that machete brand new i just opened it out of the package i was in harbor freight the other day and i purchased it brand new not even sharp out of the box but this one here is good so let me continue so now i got one two three four five six i removed one so let me go ahead and take this bottom one off right here by doing this boy look at that difference huh this one cut through like butter unbelievable so now i got one two three four five and i want four so i'm going to go ahead and cut this one right here okay so now there's one two three four four left on there so the energy could go up and that could grow taller while they're at the base and send out a bud that's gonna send out blossoms that's gonna produce bananas a lot quicker than it normally would so let's go ahead and do some others okay so hey here i am in front of this one here and there's one two three four five six and there's one coming out of that so there's seven on here so let me cut them back once again this is the lowest one so i'm going to remove it this is the second lowest one so i'm gonna remove it this is the third right here so now i'm leaving one two three four leaving four on that now these pups need to be done too but let me get the tops first it's just easier when i do it that way with the video okay here i am in front of this one let's see what it's got it's got one two three four five six on this so let me go ahead and cut two up got one two and that's leaving on there one two three four let's go ahead and get the next one okay so on this one right here got one two three four five six seven so let me remove three here's the bottom one right here here's the next bottom one and here's the next so that leaves one two three four so there's four left on there now all right let's catch the other ones okay so right over here we got one two three four five six so let me cut two off here's one let's get this one right here here's two let me put that on and that leaves one two three four so there's four on there okay same thing over here okay so right over here this one's got one two three four five six so let me cut this one off let me cut this one off and now there's one two three four i left four on okay so now this one same thing this one here has one two three four five six seven so i'm going to remove that one and that one and that one that leaves one two three four okay so now all of the taller banana plants have four now let me go ahead and get the pups okay before i squat down i always look around me to see what's under the plants and what's in back of me i don't want to get struck by a moccasin that comes out of the pond who knows so right over here i got a number of different pups so i'm going to reach down below and i'm going to remove the small leaves on the bottom and work my way up on all of them [Music] so [Music] okay so right there you could pretty well see i trimmed the smaller leaves on up i left like two or three on there so they'll shoot up even further a little bit more airflow i need to come back and pull out some weeds by the roots gonna do that another time and then so i need to take these leaves and do a little chop and drop me okay so i cut these off okay so i cut the bigger leaves up drop them to the ground and then i take take all the cuttings and i drop it right at the base of the plant all the way around try to get it as even as you can and you can probably see that now down in there that's chop and drop so i'm utilizing the foliage or the rhizome leaf that i cut off on the top and the smaller pups on the bottom and i chop them up and i put them around that's gonna decay and it's gonna wash in nutrients into the ground okay that sun's coming out good and strong so i can't see that screen so let me go ahead and do these i got the leave i'm gonna chop and drop just like this all the way around okay let's go ahead and come over here okay so on these pups i wanna do the same thing i'm gonna start from the bottom i'm gonna go ahead and cut and chop and drop at the same time now i'm going to take the bigger ferns [Applause] and i'm just going to put them around the plants like that in between okay so it's tops the top is trim the bottom's trimmed and i chop and drop all that over a couple days will decompose and go down in okay so i'm going to take some of my bigger stuff here and cut it so so okay so same thing over here i want to cut these pups you want to chop and drop them to the ground like that so okay so now i'm gonna go ahead and cut up some of these larger ones here just like this [Applause] [Applause] so okay these are all trimmed up and i chopped and dropped it let's go down okay so let's go ahead and do the same with this so so so okay so these are trimmed up and chopped and dropped got one more to go okay so let me trim these up and chop and drop thank you so okay so these are trimmed up i chopped and dropped all the leaves now let's see what it looks like okay so i did the top all the all the large ones got four and i trimmed up the bottoms and i chop and drop all the way around like that and all the tops okay so i'm facing the camera towards me because the sun is over here glaring so i'll tilt my hat like that keep the sun out of my eyes so these right here are trimmed up nicely and chopped and dropped and all i got to do is fertilize them with compost tea but i do this pretty consistently every week every other week i take a look at them see what their growth is like and when they're ready i chop them drop them to the ground i walk my property daily to see what all my plants are doing and i try to stay up on everything that i'm doing i have a lot of banana plant videos from separation to plant in to fertilizing to harvest in to supporting them up just look below on my banana playlist and there's plenty of them so for right now i have to go around and trim and chop and drop some other banana plants this morning and it's already so hot out here in florida i can't wait for us to have a cold spell but i don't slack on this i do it consistently and like i said your plants are going to have more energy they're going to grow taller they're going to produce more rhizome leaves that you could go ahead and cut off and eventually it knows it sprouted enough leaves that it's going to drop a blossom or that it's going to drop a flower the flower is going to have a lot of blossoms that are going to get pollinated and that's gonna be your bananas so if your main goal is to have bananas quick or more bananas quicker or even healthier and plumper bananas what i'm showing you here is how i go ahead and take care of my plants i got videos from digging in the ground and using the method that i use for a compost gives them a good rich healthy base they all my banana plants shoot up and shoot out a lot of pups and produce nice healthy hands of bananas and if you want yours to grow quicker and produce better check out some of my videos i'm doing this for you this is my normal workload i just decided at one point i might as well bring a video camera with me and film it to try to help people that are watching that want to get the type of pro results that i get i know i go to the extreme on what i do but there'll be a happy medium for you in there to absorb what i'm showing you and you're going to be a better gardener so let's get on with it okay so over here is a replacement banana pop right over here i had a banana plant that produced a rack of bananas and i went ahead and harvested it so i chopped it down this is the replacement it needs to be trimmed the ones that are bearing fruit you don't want to touch them once they go ahead and bear fruit you just want to trim or separate the pups so let me cut this so so okay i'm going to come back in here probably tomorrow tomorrow morning and weed this and and re-pile those up but i want to show you the um the bananas okay so this tall plant over here has bananas there you go there the hands it's still producing male blossoms which has a lot of pollinators around them they i leave them there so the pollinators stick around and know where to come okay so let's go over here to this one i have to trim this one up and as you can see over here there's a lot of hands of praying hands and there's a blossom on that one too with a lot of pollinators of course those are male blossoms but they still keep attracting the pollinator so i leave it there i don't trim any more of the rhizomes that went ahead and leafed out because it's has fruit on it the same thing with that once they have fruit you don't do it okay okay so right over here i'm gonna trim this one up there's one two three four five six so i'm gonna cut one two and that leaves one two three four now i'm going to go ahead and chop it up now this is the replacement for that okay that's it that's chopped it's dropped let's go over here okay so right over here this is my hugelkultur banana bed it goes all the way down around 85 feet around my flagpole right over here so i'm gonna go ahead and trim these up real quick okay so you see how quick it is when you don't have the camera you just go by and do it now after i put the camera away i'm going to go ahead and remove the mulch from the bottom and pat cut and put the chop and drop there so let me finish over here okay let's go down to the other section and get my ice cream bananas okay made a quick pick stop i just want to show you these are my mexican sunflowers over here these came out of my fence which are protecting it from there and you can see the deer came in and they chewed off the leaves on what came out of the fence if i didn't have that deer proofing the fence with the cable on top all my plants on the inside that will be chewed up just like this let's get on with it okay over here i have my ice cream banana plant i just planted these a couple weeks ago and i'm gonna show you the results but let me go ahead and trim these up one two three four five so i'm gonna cut this back right there i'll come back and chop this up well let me do it now okay this right here is one of my ice cream banana plants that i planted a few weeks ago and down on the bottom i got one two three four four pups already coming out of the ground this was just planted about three weeks ago or so look down below you'll see the video of me planting them so i think that's pretty cool so when i chop and drop and there's um sprouts new pups coming up i don't lay anything over them instead i put it laying down around them okay so this has got one two three four on that okay so this is chop and drop and i put it around and i left the pups exposed so let me give you a close-up of that okay here's a nice sized pup here's a pup just breaking ground right there there's another pup and over here is another pup so you can see i leave those exposed that way they grow okay so let me chop and drop these really quick so okay so right over here you see i just did my ice cream banana plants i got all these planted i got the video below there are about four feet of compost in the ground i did them up hookah culture style and as you can see they're taking off really nicely and some are shooting out pups but since i planted them they're shooting up and filling in and i'm really grateful of the results that they're getting so with that said hope you enjoyed this video i'm gonna go back around and dig out my hookah culture ones there and get the chopping drop in where the mulch is right now and i'm going to go ahead and fertilize with compost tea tomorrow morning i just went ahead and chopped and dropped over there and the sand hill cranes are just enjoying let's go take a peek they're actually in there and they're chopping with their beaks at the chop and drop let's see if they'll do it if i hold still and they're actually messing with my banana plants as well you can notice on the ground they already moved all the chop and drop look what they did they made a mess out of it so i got to put all this back you got to love wildlife but it's nature and they're curious and they like getting in there and they like getting all the insects that are down below so they get in there and they remove my chop and drop because after it's sitting down there a little bit you got frogs in there you got grubs and other insects that they just love and they know when they move that stuff that they're gonna see one run out so anyway i'm back over here let's go ahead and put this chopping drop down okay i just planted these not too long ago and the mulch is up against the base so i want to go ahead and pull some of this mulch away like that just like that i'm going to take this and wrap it to fill in what i just did there like that okay and that's what i'm gonna do to these okay this one i already done here's some chopping drop so i'm gonna put this around the base same thing over here so okay so you notice on these i just kind of like fold it into fours and then i can just wrap it like that okay this one i gotta pull a little bit of mulch away and put this around it i gotta move the mulch away on on this one here and this one here okay just a quick note when you remove the mulch you're not removing it because it's on the plant you're just removing it so the chop and drop is around the plant this mulch you could pile it all the way up to where the leaves are and on a full grown plant you could pile it up up to three feet off the ground it's actually good for the banana plant to have chips piled up in the winter time i'm gonna come in here and i'm gonna pile it up all the way to here it'll probably be taller but if it was a full grown plant i would put about two to three foot of mulch around so if we have a frost that's going to protect the corn down below there's a little tip for you so anyway that concludes this trimming up and chopping dropping my banana plants video hope you enjoyed hope you learned something i would love for you to subscribe to my channel to see some of the other videos that i come up with like i say i work out here daily and i bring the camera when i think there's something that somebody would enjoy and get something out of so hope you got something out of it subscribe like talk to y'all soon you

Channel: The Frugal Hugel Gardener

Views: 109,903

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Id: Cgi266ebHlA

Length: 45min 33sec (2733 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021