Pruning Banana Trees

In most situations, banana tree pruning is not necessary since the plants are allowed to grow freely and produce a number of pseudostems of varying age and size. If you want your plants to focus on fruit production it can however be a good idea to limit the number of pseudostems by exercising some banana tree pruning. You can for instance keep the number of pseudostems down to three or four: one tall stem that produces fruit, one medium tall stem that will produce fruit after the first one, one small stem that will turn into the middle stem within short, and possibly also a really small stem that will need to grow for quite a long time before it is ready to become the middle stem.

Banana tree pruning is also a way of obtaining suckers for propagation, since non-wild bananas cannot be grown from seed. If you need to get suckers, simply use a machete or a sharpshooter to remove them when they are a few inches tall. It is recommended to detach the sucker from the mother plant underground.

Once a pseudostem has bore fruit, it will start to wilt and decay. This doesn’t mean that it should be pruned away directly – the bananas need to stay on the stem until they are old enough to ripen on their own. Wait until no more banana hands form around the banana flower before swiftly removing the flowering stem with a sharp knife. It is important to cut the flowering stem below the level where no more banana hands are forming (below since banana flowers tend to grow upside down, but here are of course exceptions). Let the bananas stay on the pseudostem for an additional 4-6 weeks before cutting them lose and leaving them to ripen in a shaded area. Now is the time to carry out some hardcore banana tree pruning – the entire pseudostem should be cut off near ground level and removed. A pseudostem that has produced fruit will always die and there is no way of saving it. It is therefore best to cut it down right away and remove it to give the other pseudostems more light. If you cut the old pseudostem in 3-4 pieces and split them lengthwise you will speed up the decomposing process. The remains can actually be put to good use as mulching material.

If your banana plant has been subjected to a serious cold that has killed it to the ground, cut away the dead pseudostems at ground level as soon as possible. If you wait, they will start to decompose (albeit slow in really cold conditions) and cutting down decomposed pseudostems is much harder than cutting down freshly killed ones.

When banana plants grow outdoors, the wind will normally tear their leaves into shreds. This is perfectly natural and the plant will still have use for those leaves. Removing them is therefore not recommended, unless the sight of worn and torn leaves really disturb you. Removing yellow leaves is however a recommended part of proper banana tree pruning since such leaves are no longer producing any energy for the plant.