Originally Posted by nattuggla

It has been some time since my last update, so I thought I would throw a few more photos up. The banana is still growing pretty well. Originally, I had this on a wire shelf with a grow light over it, but it outgrew that pretty quickly. Being in an apartment, I didn't have very many alternatives to hanging my lights. The only thing I could come up with was to buy a taller stand. I found a backdrop stand for photography that would hold over 20 lbs and still get up to 12' tall.
One of my concerns of the plant was that it was turning black in some areas. I'm still not sure what this is, but I do believe that it was caused by a large amount of spidermites on the plant. After looking on some forums and looking online, I found an organic insecticidal soap. After a few applications of that, the last few leaves have had reduced the black spots, so I'm hopeful that with continued application, that problem will go away.
Here are the photos:

1/29/16


2/18/16





5/15/16