barbc

Just ordered my first banana. I'm in zone 7 and plan to grow my Double Mahoi in a pot so I can bring it indoors in the winter. I'm in the desert and temps hit triple digits in the summer. Hoping it will fit in a bright daylight basement with 9' ceiling for the winter. It's toasty warm there...in floor heat and small covered swimming pool. Relative humidity varies from 20% - 45% depending on whether someone has swum recently. I can add lights on a timer if it will help.

My main questions are potting mix and feeding (I'm in Washington State and many of the brands I see listed on this forum are foreign to me). Is there some sort of primer on this board for container growing that I haven't yet stumbled across that would help with these basic questions? Am I safe with a certain ratio of peat-based potting mixerlite:cactus mix or ??? TIA

Botanical_Bryce

I've been using happy frog and perlite. Be careful of mail order. I've never had them survive. They are often tiny barely out of the flask. Some companies sell larger ones.

HMelendez

Welcome to the banana gang!....

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barbc

What is happy frog?

cincinnana

Welcome to our Jungle.....

A great source of information for soilless mix's is Youtube keywords"Potting mix for plants"
Once your there you may refine your search to suit your needs. The videos are pretty accurate with great information.

Within the forums you may do a search keywords containers / potting mix's /fertilizers
There are lot of good threads to be read to find out what forum members are using.
Pick and choose what will work for you.

Container Grown Banana Plants - Bananas.org

You may also purchase A Miracle grow type mix without water retention crystals from a big box.
Commercial Potting mix's work well when you do not have the resources to make your own.

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barbc

Thanks, Cincinnana! I have experience drowning mangoes in too-heavy mix so I'm determined to keep it light with bananas. The new Miracle Grow stuff at Costco is even heavier this year (organic, looks like zero perlite) and I'm noticing that even my tomatoes don't like it as well as last year's stuff. Will definitely add perlite and probably cactus mix for better drainage.

barbc

And thanks to everyone for the welcomes! What a congenial group.
Guess I'll see just how tiny my TC shows up...may be posting here for a real pup if it doesn't work out! Learning the hard way....

cincinnana

Pearlite is an excellent amendment for your soilless mix.
Some of our forum members use coarse sand to lighten their mix.......all is an acceptable practice.

Another mix I use is called Al's Gritty mix ....it is a another homemade well draining soilless mix that can be custom made for a number of different applications. But in large container applications the mix has a lot of weight and makes moving a large container cumbersome. But the stuff works very well.

I put a link to some of my photos which show what the well draining "ratio" looks like..I use a custom perlite/peatmoss/pine fines based mix. Depending on what I am growing I just change the ratios of the materials to suit the plants needs.

In a 40 gal container the weight is still manageable with a perlite/peatmoss/pine fines based mix.


Soilless mix

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barbc

Thanks again for all the welcomes! Happily my Mahoi looks pretty good. About 12" tall to the tip of the tallest leaf, 6" pstem. Potted and looking good after 2 days. May have to order pups from Keith, though...they look just awesome. Up until now my tropicals and sub tropicals have been miracle fruit, jaboticaba, surinam cherry, australian beach cherry. This looks like a fun new adventure. I take it bananas aren't too picky about pH or chlorine from tap water?

Snarkie

Greetings Barb, and welcome to the Banana Express.

For indoor use, a cactus wmix works well, but for out doors, at least here in NC, regular potting soil mixed heavily with Stall-Dri (pumice) works very well.

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Doug (D.A. Hänks) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2955582/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1


The Only Eastern Redwood Forest in America




"Nuke my 'nanners, will you?!"

barbc

Testing.....trying to post a photo....

I think I did it! After many failures I finally found Richard's post (which needs to be a sticky) that explained that it's a two-step process and that I needed to shrink the photo pretty small. Thanks to Richard for breaking it down so even I can understand it!!

This is what my Mahoi looked like upon arrival in Washington State. I did have it ship at a moderate time of year temperature-wise...even so one leaf did get a bit toasted at the edge from contact with hot cardboard. I gave it time to slowly adapt...one day upright just plunked as is in a glass (still plenty moist inside) and out of direct light, planted in moist mix the next day, still out of direct light, watered lightly the 3rd day, added morning sun the 4th and now it's pushing out a new leaf like nothing happened to it.