Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Splitting banana pups? Use a digging bar., 1 by keonikale

keonikale wrote:
I read last week that a digging bar was the best way to dig up Banana pups. I'd started earlier this year with a shovel (which mutilated plants, suckers, and roots alike) and then switched to a ditch shovel - better but you still have to dig out around the pup since you can't put too much pressure on the shovel to hoist the nanner out. But there is still hammering involved and damaged roots, pups, etc if you're not really careful.

But the digging bar is incredible - used it for the first time today. Not only does it save the parent plant and pup itself from damage digging, but it makes hoisting it out of the ground with roots in tact really simple. In fact even the new suckers on the pup came out without any issue. One of the suckers was rather "interesting" in this photo - so I photoshop'ed it out, I guess it was growing under the corm of the other pup, it was about as thick as my arm - very strange looking for a sucker. My wife said it was "obscene" - LOL.

Just wanted to say pass word on to others who hadn't switched their methods yet with splitting pups - the digging bar is definitely the way to go! I split three total today and both the mother plant and the pups are as cleanly separated at the corms as I could have hoped for. Compared to the one I split yesterday with the ditch shovel, no comparison. Roots and everything looked great.