Bananas

Victoria - Hi - sorry I meant to say hello some time ago. I love your S. nicolai - it looks so healthy. I have always wanted to try it since you first showed pictures of a neighbour's plant. Then I got put onto Ravenala (by Kristen) as an alternative and have several healthy but very small plants. In the middle of last year I went to RHS Wisley and saw their nicolai, which was a good thirty feet high. So I think I will have to admire your pictures instead.

Nick - well done - that was a lovely plant last year.

Pete - I have just done the same to my maurelii today and it looks worse than yours. So I have cut off all the roots - I am told last years roots are of no use anyway. And I cut it back hard to a couple of inches from the base. In the process I cut out a lot of rotten material. I have treated it with sulphur powder, put it in some dryish compost and on a heat mat.

I don't know if it will work, but its essentially the same as I did last autumn with its sister plant, except that I cut that one into 4 quarters. The quarters are growing away strongly now and looking really healthy. The pictures are on the first page of this thread.

 

I had not seen this tropical area on the forum and just talked of planting bananas yesterday and today. (edible plants threads) I dig them up from local peoples gardens because they always spread (I live at the extreme edge of where they will survive on their own - but mostly freeze back in winter so only fruit every couple years.)

The starting video was interesting. I always just dug them up and if healthy plant the roots with the whole plant - even if it is 7 foot tall, and they just keep growing. Amazing. But these ones were killed back by freezing and I chopped off the dead plant and planted the root mass whole. I guess I could have subdivided them, the root ball is a foot across on the big ones.

 

Hi Colne - and welcome to the forum.

Do tell us where you are you living? - somewhere warmer than most on this forum I presume.

Also what type of banana are you talking of? I have very little experience of bananas myself, but I understand that most Musa will pup - ie grow offshoots by themselves. However the Red Abyssinian (Ensete ventricosum, of which 'Maurelli' seems to be the most common) apparently does not, which is why you need to force them by the quartering process.

 

I have no idea what kind of banana they are, the garden I got them from (too many have multiplied around their pool so I can have all I want - I have taken some last year and the year before, last autumn we got two bunches of bananas from trees in our grove.) got their first banana from a friends garden 15 years previous and that is all they know. They fruit on the second year so one needs a mild winter for the plant to make it and then get fruit. This must be a very cold tolerant kind.

We wrapped the banana trees very well but it was too cold too long, three solid days of below freezing, down to 18F, -8C at one point.

I live on the Gulf of Mexico right at the top. Most of our plants would be familiar to you but some hot weather plants make it here.

I have been planting baby palm trees up and down my road I collect from the same garden.

 

The Gulf of Mexico sounds really hot - so I am surprised that you had a -8C this winter. I live in the north of England - not very far south of Moscow in latitude and the coldest this year (which has been very mild) was -5C (23F). But then that is the differance between an island climate and a continental climate. But when the temperature here is below zero it can stay there for days.

I assume that you are getting edible fruit, when you talk about fruiting. I understand that there are only a small number of banana species (ie naturally occuring varieties) that produce edible fruit - though there seem to be quite a few cultivars (ie man-made developments of these species).

I have had a Google, and the hardiest edible banana seems to be 'California Gold', which is said to be hardy down to the low 20's F. They could be the ones that are growing around you.
Edit: A further Google confirms that California Gold is very hardy, but its still not common and is not very sweet. So it sounds like its not a commercial crop and so not likely to be growing around you.

There are lots of species of ornamental bananas (ie non edible). The hardiest is said to be Musa basjoo, which when mulched is hardy down to zone 3 of -20F.

That's interesting about bananas fruiting in their second year of growing. I now have a garden room, which was heated to 10C (50F) over the winter. So I am hoping to keep some bananas alive over the winter, inside, and so might even get some fruit.

 

I have just been Googling and found the above on a very useful site http://www.bananaplants.net/bananaplants.html . It has cleared up one question that I had about fruiting. It's clear that bananas have to be kept intact over the winter to keep the embrionic fruit. There are ways of keeping banana plants over the winter, but if the top growth is damaged in any way it won't produce fruit in the second year. So if a banana is cut to the ground by frost and loses its top growth, it has to start again from scratch.

 

Right Peter. the first year the leaves grow to make a false trunk. Look at the pictures of cross section up thread. No real trunk but leaf bases wrapped around each other, just all nestled. The second year a fruiting stalk rises up the center of those curved shingle like leaf bases - emerges and fruits. The core must remain intact and unfrozen - but the leaves still turn brown and paper like - more come out the second year too to make it all green again.

My bananas are not nearly as sweet as bought ones, harder and fatter with a more blocky shape but excellent to eat, and keep a long time in a cool room. The problem is they take for ever to ripen and have to be left on the plant till ripe - which is past time for a frost North of here; another problem. The plant - wrapped can take 26F like the citrus. This brutal freeze (for here) nocked all the leaves off all the citrus on the coast, but they are re-leafing, survived. I lost my Persian lime though, and naturally my guava as it is too far North.

 

With tempatures not going below 7'c for the next week at least, is it time to think about plant out my basjoo and sikkimensis in the ground. I've had plastic over the soil for a few weeks now to try and warm the soil.
Am I getting ahead of myself here?
They have started growing in the GH

 

Colne - Its most interesting to hear from someone who has actually seen banana fruit growing. In this country, the weather makes it essentially impossible to grow fruit outside. In fact when someone did a few years ago - it got into the national newspapers. However if you have the money you can create any climate you wish inside - which is a different matter.

One thing has puzzled me - people talk about cutting down the old stem that has produces fruit. Many years ago I went to Jamaica on holiday, and went round a commercial banana plantation. There they explained that it took several years for a banana plant to grow from scratch. But they said that if the old stem was left the new plant, which was an offshoot of the old plant, would grow in a year by feeding on the old stem. So that as the stem of the new plant rose, the stem of the old one reduced in size. None of the sources I have looked at have mentioned that - or perhaps new strains no longer need to do it.

If your bananas are not as sweet as the bought ones they may be an older strain. At Painton Zoo, in England, the papers reported that monkeys have been banned from eating bananas because the modern cultivated strains now contain 6 to 8 times as much sugar as the natural bananas that they would have eaten in the wild. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...from-eating-bananas-at-devon-zoo-9058856.html

Mowgley - I have no idea. But my records show that there has always been a frost in April in my garden.

 

I don't put mine out until first week of June. If you have greenhouse space I would leave them in - they will grow much faster, and be bigger, better, plants when you plant them out.

 

bouight this, this morning, label says Basjoo, but it dont look like basjoo to me.
There is a sign of red markings on the newest leaf and the leaves look a little too broad to me.

Anyway, I only bought it because I thought it wasn't basjoo.
If that makes sense, any ideas, I was thinking possibly sikki.

 

In the 70's I worked in West Africa for over four years and the banana, like everything else, grew like weeds. The leaves were that big that the locals often used them as umbrellas during the rainy season.
In my yard I had banana's, a coconut tree, Mango's, lemons (actually more like limes) pineapple and a cola nut tree. I started taking seed out with me and grew my own tomato's, cucumber and onions, it was so easy, with the climate there nothing failed. Ah, happy days!!

 

Got the markings of a sikki but it seems to be shorter.
Could it be a musa zebrina maybe

 

Certainly hope its not zebina, too tender.

It is only a young plant, I presume its micro propagated, its already showing a pup.