should we water heavily, fertilize and so on? and what it the best way to
trim them which will result in the least damage to the stalks?

Sammy, I have no formal horitcultural training, so someone with such
knowledge may have some better info for you. I had bananas and Travelers
palms at my home in FL for 25 years. Don't fertilize or water for another
month or so. The freezes are probably over, but the winter has been so
strange that you don't want to encourage more new, tender growth and then
have that damaged in another frost. When you do fertilize, I found that the
bananas respond better to liquid fertilizers, rather than the granular type.

the trunks of the banana trees and the leaves of the banana trees closest
to
the ground survived. the higher leaves are brown and green or totally
brown.
the stalks to which the dead leaves are attached are still green and look
ok. where should i trim from? the trees are about 8 - 10 feet tall and
they
all have new growth coming in.

Trim only what is brown, for the sake of appearance and maybe disease. Then,
in 3-4 weeks, you can start taking out the stalks that don't have some good
green growth at the top, or the ones that are completely out of whack with
the desired shape of the landscaping. Most of the banana plants that I had
(variety unknown) were only good for one year. They sent up two or more new
shoots in the early spring and the parent plant began to die off.

Both plants are very resilient. They will survive very heavy frost. There
were some years when I had to do major pruning, leaving only a few sprouts
of green coming from the ground. The first time, it broke my heart. It took
a couple years before I learned that they would grown like weeds and not to
fear pruning them.


similar situation with the Traveller palms. these are 10-14 ft tall. Some
of
the leaves are totally brown and dead i fear. some are a mixture of brown
and green. stalks look ok. and there is new growth coming in. where should
i
trim from? should i let the brown/green leaves alone of clip them?