Fall Storm Cleanup: What Our 20-Foot Banana Palms Taught Us About Winterizing

After leaving our banana palm stalks standing last winter, they reached nearly 20 feet and produced fruit—but a fall windstorm revealed an important downside. Here’s what we learned and what we’re changing this winter.

10/2/20266 min read

Fall Storm Cleanup: What Our 20-Foot Banana Palms Taught Us About Winterizing

Growing tropical-looking plants in the Pacific Northwest often means experimenting.

Sometimes those experiments work better than expected. Sometimes they expose a problem you hadn't considered.

Our banana palms did both this year.

Last winter, instead of following our previous practice of cutting the banana pseudostems all the way to the ground, we tried something different. We removed the leaves but left the tall stalks standing through winter.

The goal was simple: see whether preserving that existing height would give the plants a head start the following spring.

It definitely did.

By late summer, several of our established banana clumps had grown dramatically taller than usual, with some plants approaching 20 feet and leaves stretching more than 8 feet long.

Even more surprising, several plants flowered and began producing bananas for the first time.

Then the fall wind arrived.

Our First Experiment Leaving Banana Stalks Tall

For years, our normal winter cleanup involved cutting our banana plants back much more aggressively.

Last winter was the first time we deliberately left the pseudostems standing tall.

That changed the way the plants grew the following season.

Instead of rebuilding all of their height from ground level, established stalks began the season with considerably more structure already in place. The result was some of the tallest banana plants we have grown here in our Pacific Northwest garden.

The plants developed huge leaves and created exactly the dense tropical canopy we were hoping for.

Some of the larger clumps became nearly tree-like.

That alone made the experiment worthwhile.

But something happened that we had never experienced before.

Our Banana Palms Produced Fruit

Several plants eventually flowered and began developing clusters of bananas.

For us, this was a first.

The plants produced the large hanging banana flower followed by visible hands of small green bananas.

The fruit didn't have enough time to mature before fall.

That wasn't especially surprising.

By this point in the season, overnight temperatures were falling into the 40s and our daylight hours were getting shorter. Even though the plants had enough summer growth to flower and begin producing fruit, there simply wasn't enough heat and sunlight remaining for the bananas to ripen.

Still, seeing fruit develop in our garden was a major milestone.

And the flowers certainly weren't wasted.

Bees regularly visited them while they were open.

See the full progression of our banana palm producing fruit

Then the Fall Windstorm Arrived

Toward the end of September, a strong fall windstorm moved through our area.

Our banana plants immediately showed us the downside of leaving those tall pseudostems standing.

Banana leaves are enormous.

On a calm summer day, that huge foliage is what gives these plants their incredible tropical appearance.

During strong wind, however, those same leaves act like sails.

Several of the tallest plants suffered torn, folded or partially broken leaves.

The damage wasn't equal throughout the yard.

That was one of the most useful things we observed.

Plants growing near buildings, palms or other vegetation received considerably more protection.

Plants growing in more exposed areas took the worst damage.

That reinforces something we've noticed repeatedly when growing borderline tropical-looking plants in the Pacific Northwest:

Microclimate matters.

A banana planted only a short distance away can experience dramatically different wind exposure depending on nearby structures and vegetation.

The Tradeoff We Didn't Fully Appreciate

Leaving the pseudostems tall absolutely gave us something.

We gained height.

We gained an earlier tropical canopy.

And, for the first time, we gained flowers and developing fruit.

But we also created taller plants that were considerably more vulnerable once fall storms arrived.

That doesn't mean leaving banana pseudostems standing was a failure.

Quite the opposite.

It showed us another way these plants can be managed.

But after watching the results for an entire growing season, we're adjusting our approach.

That is one of the reasons we like documenting what actually happens in our garden rather than simply repeating generalized growing advice.

There isn't always one correct way to grow these plants.

Different pruning and winterizing methods can produce different results.

Now we've seen those differences firsthand.

Cleaning Up 20-Foot Banana Plants

Cleanup became its own challenge.

Some of the damaged leaves were more than 8 feet long, and several plants were approaching 20 feet tall.

A normal pair of hand pruners wasn't particularly useful that high in the canopy.

Our tool of choice?

A bread knife.

It may not look like specialized garden equipment, but the serrated blade slices through banana leaves and soft pseudostem material extremely well.

For the tallest damaged leaves, we needed a ladder and additional reach to safely access the material.

Once a damaged leaf was accessible, the soft banana tissue was relatively easy to cut.

The bigger issue was controlling those enormous leaves as they came down.

A mature banana leaf carries considerably more weight and surface area than it appears to when it's still attached to the plant.

We Also Started Thinning the Clumps

The storm cleanup gave us a good opportunity to begin evaluating the individual clumps before winter.

Our banana plants multiply aggressively through pups, and established clumps can become very dense after several growing seasons.

Rather than waiting until everything had completely died back, we began removing damaged foliage and identifying which stalks would eventually be removed.

This also gave us a much clearer look at the base of each cluster.

Several of these clumps will be divided.

Those divisions should also provide additional banana plants for our spring inventory.

See our banana palms and other cold-hardy tropical plants available locally

What We're Changing This Winter

After seeing the results of last winter's experiment, we've decided to change our approach again.

This year, after our first meaningful frost or short period of freezing temperatures, we plan to cut the banana pseudostems back to ground level.

There are two main reasons.

1. We Want to Keep the Height More Manageable

Nearly 20-foot banana plants are impressive.

They're also difficult to maintain.

Cutting them back should reset their height and allow the plants to rebuild from a more manageable starting point next spring.

2. We Want to Divide Several Established Clumps

Cutting everything back will make it considerably easier to see the structure of each clump and separate pups from established rhizomes.

Several clusters have become large enough that division is now necessary anyway.

Starting with shorter plants next season will also give us another useful comparison with this year's tall-stalk experiment.

So Was Leaving the Stalks Tall Worth It?

For us, yes.

We learned something that we couldn't have learned without actually trying it.

Leaving the pseudostems standing gave our banana plants an enormous head start.

The plants grew taller than we've typically seen after cutting them completely back.

Several reached close to 20 feet.

And for the first time, we had banana plants flower and develop fruit.

But the tradeoff was equally clear.

Tall banana plants with enormous leaves are much more exposed to wind damage, particularly when they're growing away from structures or protective vegetation.

For our garden, the next step is to reset the clumps this winter and see how they respond.

That doesn't make last year's method wrong.

It simply means we're continuing to adjust the way we manage these plants based on what we actually observe.

What Happens Next

We're not finished with this experiment.

Once we've had our first real freezing weather, we'll be cutting the remaining banana clusters down and documenting the process.

We'll also divide several of the larger clumps and take a closer look at how the rhizomes and pups have developed after a full season of unusually vigorous growth.

That will become the next chapter in this experiment.

See how we winterized our banana palms last year

For now, the biggest lesson from this season is simple:

Leaving banana pseudostems tall can produce spectacular growth, but in a Pacific Northwest garden, that additional height comes with additional exposure to fall wind.

This year we're trading some of that height for easier maintenance, easier division and hopefully a sturdier start next season.

And we'll see what the bananas teach us next.