Over-winter brugs outside

A while back we were having a discussion of how to overwinter a brug in the garden. Lots of good ideas were discussed.
I came across this today and wonder is it would work for brugs.

http://www.cooltropicalplants.com/Protecting-cold-hardy-bananas.html

I am hesitant to try it because I only have 2 brugs and would hate to loose 1 of them. Do any of you experts think this might work for brugs?

I would just plant them in the ground on the south side of your home, mulch well and hope for the best. If you loose them, they can be replaced. I lost more Brugs last Winter than any Winter before but it was cooold. I am zone 8 which, is what I thought Portland was, maybe you are in a little microclimate.

mamajack is having a Brug co-op and you can get Brug cuttings as low as $2 each. Good luck.

This phrase was part of the first sentence:

Cold hardy bananas can stand temperatures in the low 30s and high 20s if mulched, such as in the method in your link.

As a group, Brugs are not that cold hardy. Heavily mulched, a few are root hardy beyond zone 8 and even here some don't return in the spring, but the tops will die. I'm on the border between zone 8b and 9a. Until this past winter, the temperatures of the previous 8 winters were well within zone 9a. I went through extraordinary lengths to retain the "Y"s on my Audrey Hepburn. I strung 2 strings of C9 Christmas lights, wrapped trunks and first 2 sets of "Y"s with pipe insulation, surrounded the plant with 4 - 45 gallon trash cans filled with water, wrapped it in a double layer of frost cloth rated down to 24ºF and covered the entire arrangement with a layer of plastic to prevent rain water from transmitting the cold through the frost cloth. She still died down to about 18" from the ground. I think of her as being hardy given that the other 2 I had in the ground died completely and never returned.

My advice would be to take large cuttings which include the "Y" and overwinter them in a bucket indoors. They will root slowly and be ready to be potted next spring. Prune what is left in the ground down to between 6" - 12" and cover them with a thick layer of mulch. If you get lots of windy storm during winter, you want to put a wire cage down first and fill that with the mulch. to keep it in place.

This is how my set up ended. I started winter with a mini-greenhouse frame made with pvc pipes and covered with thick plastic. Inside the Brug was covered with frost cloth and surrounded by the trash cans. The greenhouse was held down with a large tiedown. However, the first hard wind shredded and blew off the plastic. I improvised and ended up with this. Way too much trouble for the results I got.

Yes... I hate the thought.. for the cost of overwintering.. I can likely fly to Germany in the spring.. and buy brugs... MMMMM now there's a thought... take cuttings and buy a ticket..
well.. it is a good excercise... start by taking a cutting for winter rooting like Veronica suggests.. that layer of manure they start with... they don't mention... but it's likely to be fresh.. and will provide alot of heat if it is... right through the winter if it is short... adding more about the base is helpful.. we'd always throw some on some outdoor plumbing to keep it from freezing...... you might try getting them back from the roots... just in the ground in zone 8.. At mothers in zone seven... I get the majority of hers back from the roots with out any mulching to speak of.. maybe a few inches... but that's on the south side... in front of the greenhouse... lots of additional reflective light ... OH.. and the slab of the house/greenhouse is insulated... and at greenhouse temperatures... some 3 ft away. and is maybe 10 tons of heated concrete [ HA HA I checked the slab weight... more like 122.5 tons ] going down a few feet.. like the brug roots.. so that's additional underground heating.. planting near a house slab is quite helpful... selecting a great microclime is real benefical.. in pushng zones... you'd be amaised how different spots a few yards away can be... through out the winter.. their method is wonderful... it takes into account alot of problems in heavy mulching... if i was doing it i'd also try and mulch to a great depth.. all the ground for maybe 6-8 ft around it.. the cold moves nicely sideways.. as well as straight down... yes... the brugs aren't near;y as forgiving as a hardy banana..

All this sounds like a lot of work! What I have been doing all these years is digging the plants with a little bit of soil still attached, dropping them in pots and moving them to the basement. I water a little bit when I move them, and then maybe two or three times during the winter. They drop their leaves, but restart easily early spring.
The only drawback is that they take longer to bloom. Usually late August. This year only mid September because I went on vacation and they were not well watered during our continuing drought.