Years ago I volunteered on a farm in Thailand. We build several check dams in a seasonal stream by filling rice sacks with mud from the bottom of the stream. These dams created pools that stayed around even after the stream was not flowing.
Into each of these we planted banana plants. Since bananas have shallow
roots but love
water, the banana plants thrived in this environment, which totally surprised me because I had no idea banana plants would tolerate standing water.
Anyway, more than a decade later I live in central Texas. Periodically we get hard freezes that kill off banana plants. Some people wrap up and insulate their bananas. But the freezes that kill the bananas are usually pretty brief.
There's a stream bed that's dry for part of of the year here, and I've begun to wonder if building some check dams in it to create shallow pools might allow the banana plants to survive winter freezes. Shouldn't the water be a bit warmer than the surrounding air? Would it be
enough to protect the plants?
Any experiments with building check dams and planting nto them?
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