Welcome! I will guide you through rooting a rootless or peeled corm. Many sellers and overseas shippers will send them this way. It is a very safe way to send a corm and actually the recommend way of many Musa institutions. Peeled is just the way it sounds, they take a knife and peel off the outer skin around the corm like you would a potato. They are very fragile and harder to get started in this condition. I do not peel corms there is many other safer ways to sterilize them before shipping. It is usually done in tropical areas where musa corm weevils are an issue. This can also be a good method to save a rotting/during corm or plant.
When potting rootless corms have no roots to anchor them. To root a rootless corm you need 2 things. Water and air! The surface of the corm needs moisture but also oxygen to grow roots back and not rot. The best by far medium I have found to root corms is Coarse Sand! The absolute best is quartz silica! You can buy it as “Pool Filter Sand” at Home Depot or other stores. I have also used the paver sand in the gardening center. Or even the quickcrete sand. Do not use beach sand! It has salt!
- Take a normal cheap nursery pot the corm will fit into and have an inch+ of space on all sides. Make sure the pot has lots and lots of holes on the bottom. Absolutely NO pots that retain any water or have a reservoir at the bottom.
- We need to stop up these holes to keep the sand in but allow water to freely drain out. I have used gravel and it did ok. The best I have found is landscape cloth. All we are doing is allowing water to drain but holding sand in.
- Now it’s time to pot the corm up. Make sure it’s pointed up and the top of the corm is about .5”-1” under the sands surface.
- Now water it in very very well. You want the sand to settle all around the corm. I will sometimes tap the sides of the pot and giggle the pup to help it settle.
- Finally you want to put the pot in full shade out of the weather. Depending on time of year you may need to add a little water every 5-7 days. Depending how many roots you want, I am normally finished rooting in 12-15 days. Good thing about sand is you can do a root check without harming anything. And when you pull the corm out spray lots of water so it will pull out easily!
Thats it!! Now after you have a healthy rooted corm you are ready to plant into a pot. Just click the link below for my Planting instructions for a rooted corm!