I'm planning to keep my banana tree in a container indoors, currently the container is too small so I'm forced to transplant the tree. I don't know if it's recommended to separate the "mother stalk" from the smaller stalks if I only have 2 others. I also want to know what soil mixture I should use in the pot I will be transplanting the tree into, what minimum temp.I should keep the tree at, and what organic fertilizers are recommended by other gardeners to use on this plant.

I've also seen peach twig blight and peach brown rot popping up all over Davis. Last year was really very wet during the blooming time, and also warm, and no amount of spraying would have helped. There were a lot of bee activities last year when my peaches and nectarines bloomed. Even my bush cherries got hit, and they are supposed to have the "wild" disease resistant genes. This year it is about to repeat... my peaches and nectarines are in the pink stage, and the week-long forecast says intermittent rains, but colder. Only the plums and pluots are truly "spray-less" trees. Good choice on planting the plum Sue!

This is the pertinent portions of a thread from a few years ago that might help: Multiple Plants in One Hole The three-to-a-hole thing is a totally new concept to me. I question if that would work because each of the trees would grow at unequal rates. I have a Fuerte, a Reed and a Haas planted in close proximity (15 feet apart) and clearly the Fuerte is growing much faster than the other two. All three were planted at the same time, but the Fuerte is easily twice as big as the other two. If you put three trees in the same hole, wouldn't one eventually overgrow the other two? ___________________________________________________________________ Three in a hole planting is easy. To insure good drainage first make a 12" to 18" mound that is at least 4 or 5 feet wide. Then dig a hole in it large enough for the three 5 gallon size trees. Throw some slow release fertilizer in the hole. Make sure the trees are a few inches above the soil surface. They may settle a little. And you don`t want them planted too low. Cover the whole mound with a thick coat of mulch and you are set. The trees won`t grow any slower because they are sharing a hole. Its a great space saver. Reed and Pinkerton are Guatemalan and Fuerte is a hybrid. You need a Mexican for better pollination. Bacon would be a good choice. ___________________________________________________________________ For years I`ve done the 3 in a hole planting with all my fruit trees from avocados, persimmons, cherimoyas, asian pears and guavas to peaches, plums, nectarines, apples and apricots. I get good production from all of them. I`ve never had one of the three trees grow faster and take over the hole. It works especially well with stone fruits like peaches. In one hole I have a early bearing peach, a mid season and a late season variety. My avocado trees are still young so I don`t get that many avocados yet. _________________________________________________________________ Three in one or 4 in 1 up to several in one hole is a very good alternative to multigraft trees. I have pears that are not graft compatible so I planted them all in one hole, and they are not complaining. They've been busy supplying me with fruits for two seasons now. But then again, most of my fruits are multi-grafts, some I did the grafting myself. __________________________________________________________________ It is still possible to plant them in one hole if the difference in size is not great. So just find a bigger Granny Smith to match the size of your Pink Pearl. During the dormant season, you can dig out the pink pearl to bare root it. Make sure to prune the top to compensate for the root disturbance. You can prune the pearl to be the same size as that of granny smith. Then plant them back together in the same hole. Deciduous trees that go a period of dormancy are okay for this. I have even dug bigger trees, bare-rooted them and relocated them to the proper place. When the winter temperature is mild, I dump a lot of ice around the plant everyday for one week before I dig them out and bare-root them. You can not do this with Avocados and most other evergreen fruit trees like citruses. ___________________________________________________________________ ??? You're mentioning 5 gal plants.... I was under the, perhaps misguided, impression that to do this 'multiples in one hole' technique you had to use bare root trees. ???? ___________________________________________________________________ You don`t see bare root avocado plants. For some reason only "stone" fruits like peaches, plums and apricots are available bare root. I`ve only seen avocado plants in 5 or 15 gallon containers. The trunks aren`t as close as they would be if they were bare root, but it hasn`t made a difference in my trees. ___________________________________________________________________ I think the reason you don't see bare-root Avocados and Citrus is because they're evergreen trees. You can't really bare-root an evergreen commercially. __________________________________________________________________ ..so can i place all three 5gal buckets(with the bottoms cut out) in the hole?? will that work??? only reason ide like to do that is i once heard that the buckets serve as a guide for the roots to shoot more downward rather than outward.. that way the roots dont get all crazy and lift my back wall up in the future... but if you just drop all 3 in the hole bare root style so be it..whatevers best for the tree's is best for me. i love hass and reed never tasted bacon though .. anymore tasty trios that will work great together??.. ___________________________________________________________________ Â

It is pretty easy. You only use is for certain types of trees that tend to get very hard, unyielding buds while in cold storage. Some of the varieties you use it for are oaks, redbuds, hackberries, weeping willows, birch, hawthorne, some types of dogwoods, barberries, and ornamental pears. When these trees are held in cold storage they sort of get "stuck" in dormancy and don't want to wake up. Often, if you plant these types of bare-root trees without sweating them, they stay in dormancy for months and, if they don't break dormancy at the right time after spring planting, they can die before the following spring rolls around. What you want to do by "sweating" them is to create a super-humid, moist environment that gives the buds extra "encouragement" to swell and break. You can sweat them in several ways. For example, if the trees came in a large cardboard box, you can take them out of it, line it with heavy plastic, and then put the trees back into it. If they have any packing material around their roots, remove any plastic and wet down that packing material throughoughly. Then use duct tape to seal up the large sheet of plastic and make it as air-tight as possible. Store the whole thing in moderate temperatures between 45 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit out of direct sun. Within a few hours, you should see condensation inside the plastic and that is what you want. It can take 1 to 2 weeks of sweating for the buds to swell and break. If your condensation gradually disappears, you may have to briefly open the plastic and wet down the packing material around the roots and then reseal it. Check the buds for signs of swelling every couple of days. Or, if you have a polyhouse or tightly constructed hoophouse or high tunnel that holds in the humidity well, you can wet down the roots and sweat them in that structure following the same principle of shielding them from direct sunlight and maintaining the right temperatures and high humidity. Or, you can lay the plants down on a garage or barn floor, remove any plastic from the trees root area and wet down the packing material around the roots, and cover up the whole thing with a sheet of heavy duty plastic or a tarp. It is a little harder to maintain humidity under the tarp though unless you lay it underneath the plants on the floor and sort of wrap it around the plants and seal it shut with duct tape.. Once you have swelling buds, the sweating has achieved its goal of breaking dormancy. The key to success with sweating is what you do after the sweating because the plants need to go into the ground when the weather is warm and humid--very similar conditions to their sweating period only the humidity is natural and not artificially mainatained under plastic. If you plant the trees and a late cold snap occurs, you can loose the dormancy-breaking effect unleashed by the sweating. So, you don't want to sweat trees until the weather is conducive to planting. And, as soon as the buds swell and you remove the plants from their sweating "area", you want to plant them ASAP. That's all you have to do to "sweat" a dormant tree.