Has anyone had luck overwintering or protecting the roots of sugarcane in cool west coast climates, such as inland central CA, coastal foggy parts of CA, or even the PNW?
On a whim I ordered some “Purple Ribbon” cuttings back in February, planting a couple outdoors and a couple in my greenhouse “experimental stuff” bed. I posted about it here when they were sprouting earlier this year:
The seller said he knew of one person growing greenhouse sugarcane in Oregon, but otherwise he had no idea if it was feasible to zone push here.
For the outside ones, I put them in direct sun where my rainwater collection pond overflows. Here’s what it looks like today (no full size segments yet):
I almost certainly didn’t fertilize them enough this year, I’m planning to cut them to ground level around the first mild frost and pile the roots under fresh wood chip mulch to protect them for winter. If they sprout in spring I’ll give them lots of food next year and see how big they can get in a season.
The greenhouse ones are a lot harder to photograph because the watermelon vine grew all over it, but it’s about twice as big and has a few nice looking segments around ground level, though no clue what the sugar content will be:
Ribbon cane is an old variety they used to grow here in Louisiana. They have developed varieties that are much more cold hardy that are planted now. They are planting sugar cane farther north here in recent years. I believe the commercial sugar cane fared pretty well with last years Arctic blast. You could search LSU Ag Center for info on cold-hardy varieties they have developed.
Thank you for this tip! Here’s a guide to their varieties:
Do you know if any of those are available to the general public anywhere? In particular, L01-283 sounds like a good one to try for zone pushing in cool climates, since it has both good cold tolerance and emerges in cooler soil temperatures, i.e., earlier in spring. A quick googling didn’t turn up any places selling seed cane of that variety.
I’m not sure how you would get some starts of those varieties. You could contact the LSU Sugar Research Station and see what they tell you. You might have to make a trip down to Louisiana. It is on the other end of the state from me. Hope you have success finding some.
I’ve got purple “high elevation” Asian cane. that’s how it was sold to me. it’s got a few thick canes but I’ll need to repot it larger. or split it up. it’s not coming to size well yet, it’ll be in the greenhouse now over the winter.
as you can see, it dried up recently, it was just out of reach of the watering and missed a few days. I’ve been giving it plenty and it’s got a lot of new green growth on it since. I should trim the brown dry leaves out.
Very surprised to see essentially no frost damage on the Purple Ribbon that’s planted outdoors despite two nights in a row where it was below freezing for 6 hours and 3.5 hours, with lows of 30°F and 31°F, respectively:
Since individual segments root so easily, I assume it’s safe to divide them up. I’m planning to cut back my greenhouse patch to just above ground level before planting it out in the yard in the spring. It’s just too tall for the greenhouse, and still well short of the size usually harvested for sugar:
The greenhouse ones grew to about twice the size of the outdoor ones. The outside patch still looks ok a week after the 30°F frost that I expected would kill it back, though, so I have perhaps too-high hopes that the roots will survive the winter:
Went ahead and cut that one. The most mature segment (just above ground) had a brix of 13 and a pleasantly sweet taste, but by the 5th segment that was down to 7 brix and tasted like grassy water. So, not ready to be cut, as I suspected! But at least the path is mostly clear on that side of the greenhouse now.
Do you mean the tallest node where new leaves emerge, or the ends of the tallest leaves? My tallest one was the one I cut, which was a little over 3 feet to the highest node and about 8 or 9 feet tall if you measure to the leaf tips sticking up from that.
I used to grow sugarcane and usually would keep only the section from ground level to below the first green leaf base for eating. Anything above just isn’t sweet enough to be worth in. The inner part of the growing tip of sugarcane is also edible. You cut off the leaves and peel the leaf bases until the bud is tender enough to snap off by hand. The shoots are a bit like bamboo shoots or hearts of palm.
