hi viv i usually just moan and complain a lot ... for a week or two ... to see how they recover on their own ... and then.. when i know what is truly damaged ... then i go do some pruning .... removing as little as possible.. to make them look better ... if you were asking at 10pm .. what you might have done... anything that would reduce the frost actually hitting the plant would be helpful ... like a sheet.. paper.. a box.. pots.. whatever ... it tends to trap ground heat .. and every degree saved reduces your risk ... the downside is .. you have to remove it in the late morning ... before the day heats too much ... which can be very problematic for peeps who have to go to work ... did i answer what you were asking???? ken

Winter is insanely busy apart from a couple of weeks around Xmas, it is the busiest and hardest time of year. Seed sowing picks up pace after August, then there is leaf raking, clear-up, pruning fruit trees, bulb planting, bare root planting, wood stacking (sympathies, Lyn), fencing, building, garlic and beans to go in, wood chipping, then veggies start after Xmas in a frenzy. Summer, its just weeding and deadheading and watering - easy, mindless stuff. So yeah, I usually have a lot to ramble on about on this forum (and do.....at length, in the company of plenty others). As a rule though, we tend to spend far less time evaluating our mistakes and the vast majority of posts are invariably situated in some sunny uplands of next year's promise....frequently tipping over from fantasy into completely delusional.

hello, I live in Kentucky, so we are pretty much in the same area. If you have the room inside and your banana is showing signs of new growth after the frost damage, then by all means keep it alive, in a sunny location of course. Water when needed, use fertilizer very lightly while growing indoors. Depending on size of plant, determines the size of your corm or rhizome. Small plants will have much less corm to feed off of, thus, if you can keep small plants alive indoors then its better than making them go dormant. If you have a large well established banana at least a year old, then your chances of survival are greater when you let them go dormant for the winter indoors. To store inside, cut pstem down below leaf level, cover with cloth, in a dark cool room. No need to water,feed during this time. Once spring arrives, and the threat of frosty weather leaves, then place outside, water and feed the banana to start growth again. Now if you decide to keep them alive indoors, and your damaged bananas look awful from the frost, you can cut off the leaves and stem below the damage, and the plant should take off again. If you are growing indoors, then the process will be a little slower. If kept in a warm, sunny area, watered and feed, the plant will recover from area cut and start regrowth. This process is only if you want to keep them alive indoors, and you do not want the long stem with one leaf sticking out the top. You will loose height, however your new growth will look nicer. Or, you can cut the damaged leaves off, and let the plant continue to grow from that point with the one leaf at the top. Your choice. I hope I didnt sound to confusing.

Paula, You have to realize the sad, sickly plants stay home as "back up plants" in case hail or some other disaster strikes, and I only bring "the best ones" to the Spring Fling" to give away. Diane, Speaking of getting better, I hope your infected finger is improving, and I hope the infected finger isn't your green thumb! Leava, Doesn't it seem peculiar that we often talk about what a stress reliever gardening is but then we forget to mention all the times it brings more stress into our lives? lol I was just trying to provide a balanced view of gardening in case anyone here is laboring under the misguided belief that it is all fun and games. : ) Let's face it, none of us has a Martha Stewart type of estate with a staff of gardeners, landscapers, etc. We all live right here in the southern plains in the Real World! Dorothy, I second that suggestion! I always buy a bag of Epsom Salts in the springtime "just in case the pepper plants need it" but, really, they never need it....but I do! Gardening, like aging, is not for sissies, you said, and that is so very, very, very true. The cow incident happened to me 3 or 4 times and then by the time someone came to help me herd cows, they'd totally disappeared without a trace. Wily cows who are good at escaping from a pasture often seem to have an uncanny ability to put themselves up again. About the 4th or 5th time I saw cows that then disappeared before anyone could get there to help herd them, we figured out they were escaping from a downed fence at Ranch A about 1/2 mile from us as the crow flies (but much farther by road), traveling through Ranch B's pastures, coming through that ranch's broken water gap gate onto our property, and then traveling through our creek until they reached the woods beside the garden. If the cows hadn't left hoofprints on the creek bank one day, the whole neighborhood probably still would be thinking I was losing my mind and seeing imaginary cows. Rancher A fixed his fence, Rancher B fixed his water gap gate and I haven't been visited by an entire herd of cows since then, although plenty of other animals, including goats, have managed to find their way to my garden. If I didn't have a fence, needless to say, I wouldn't have a garden. I now know why country women's hair turns gray. Dawn