I love reading old horticultural and agricultural literature. Mainly it is for low-tech methods or simply as social history, though there are their notable passages, as above. One of the most famous horticulturists of the first half of the 20th Century once enriched the soil at the bottom of a new planting of grapes with the bodies of starving feral cats he had euthanized (at a newly acquired property I believe). Almost Indian style as with fish. It seemed a bit shocking but he claimed they were in miserable shape. I could tell from his other writings that he was not at all a "cat hater" and instead liked them and appreciated their usefulness on farms with barns and feed around and had reasonable suggestions for their protection and comfort and care.

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.

katkin --- sorry not to respond in a more timely manner but the freakin' comcast server has been going up and down regularly. Been busy with dad, he's 91, starting daily therapy for bad edema. I'm close to the new Wallymart, off of Gatlin. How long have you been growing bananas and what kinds are they? Real good tip on putting grass clippings into our PSL muck sand. I did that in Charlotte, NC to break down the red clay soil. Smitee -- I haven't done any study on palms at all. Get really good info from University of Florida, IFAS Extension. Just type in palms, or bananas and click on the UF/IFAS website. That's how I started.

UPDATE Their doing geat. It WAS time to uncover them. All 3 have straightened up and are pushing out a new shoots. Their already a foot taller hence the warm weather and rains. I only had the chairs over them for 2 days and decided that xerophyte was right, the first set will burn but, won't hurt the new growth. I got the idea to use lounge chairs last summer when I purchased bare root Roses online in the heat of July. It worked like a charm as they all survived 90+ degree days bare root. Watergal, I tried just covering with a huge Burlap Bag of leaves two years ago. All I got was mush come spring time. They rotted from top all the way to the roots. Nothing survived, not even a pup. I think it would have worked had I tarped the top to keep out the excess moisture. I was pissed. Lesson learned. It was a really cold winter here in south Jersey. How did yours survive this year? Did you save any pseudostem height again?