Well, it is a balmy -11C out there today but, under this blanket of snow lies three fig trees (Goutte d'or, Brown Turkey, and Børnholm), some banana (musa basjoo) and some grape vines... the figs survived last winter when we had less snow and it was much colder! The snow acts like a natural insulator.

Wow Amazing!!
I never thought Bananas can handle snow!

Yes... there are only a few types that will survive. They usually die down to the ground but come back from the corm. Much like figs here. If the tree is not properly insulated, it will die back but should come back from the roots. We may get lots of snow but the frost doesn't go deep.

Tad,
do your bananas actually produce tasty edible fruit?   If so then I need to check into this..LOL

Musa basjoo does not produce edible fruit.

From the reading I've done, the Musa sikkimensis is the hardiest banana to have a somewhat edible fruit.

http://www.hardytropicals.com/bananas.html

Hi Pino,
Last time I checked, bananas need 18 months of growth to produce flowers and fruits.
So if you're loosing the stems each winter, I would say you can't get fruits .

Tad,  do you know what your minimum temp was last year that your fig plants survived?

Hey Masterful, thanks for the Green Barn link!

I keep my Dwarf Cavendish Banana in a pot, it spends the summer outside in basically a humidity bin since Colorado has no humidity... at all.  Then spends the winter in Garage greenhouse.

The banana tree does not produce any fruit in my garden. It is simply a curiosity. The figs survived under a layer of mulch temperatures below -20C. We had a few days where it actually got to -35C. Sorry it took so long to answer these questions.