Quote:
Originally Posted by jen
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Don't hold out on me Richard.  Tell me what your thinking. |
The winter temperatures in your location rarely, if ever drop below 40 (F). So it is an excellent location for many banana cultivars. Now it is true that you do not have the heat units (amount of heat accumulated during the year) of other locations. This is not a serious problem, because you have more bananas to choose from than I at the cost of longer gestation periods. There are heat-loving bananas which you won't be able to obtain quality fruit from, but there are plenty of good people here to guide you and me away from these (thanks Jon!).
When I set aside an area in my yard to grow bananas, I figured there is at most enough room for five or six varieties. Realizing there is more to bananas than "yellow-skinned dessert", I wanted to represent some different flavors, different fragrances of fruit, cooking types, etc. As Jarred will tell you, I went totally hog wild cataloging about 450 named varieties of edible bananas, of which about 165 are unique names and the remainder are synonyms. From these I sought shorter varieties (10 foot or under pseudostem) and various categories of taste and type among them. From there I prioritized them based on those I've tasted and also recommendations from others whom I know have similar tastes. Goldfinger was certainly in the top 20 of the dessert varieties, but not the top 10. But that fits my tastes, someone else might have a completely different experience.
Here's the varieties I ended up choosing:
1000 Fingers
African Rhinohorn
Dwarf Brazilian
Dwarf Orinoco
Dwarf Namwa
Sweetheart
I also have a few other varieties acquired serendipidously, such as Manzano which I will either sell or trade away next year.
