Clare_CA

I'm hoping to get an I.D. on this one. I'll add pictures as the bloom and bananas develops. Thanks for your help.

June, 2010:



November, 2010

coast crab

praying hands?

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Clare_CA

Thanks, Russell, but I don't think it is PH simply because I think this one came from Home Depot or Logee's or Green Thumb nursery, and I don't think they carry that one. Perhaps it will be easier to identify once it has some bananas on it. Thanks again for your help.

Clare_CA

Here are two more pics of my banana with the uncertain identification:




Thanks for looking.

venturabananas

Hi Clare,

Again, not an expert, but...

Looks like a dwarf Cavendish based on height, burnt and bent leaves (from too much fert, which is exactly how mine looks and Cavs are especially susceptible to), color of the bud, and origin (Lowe's possibly-- I got my dwarf Cav there).

How tall is that plant, 5' or so?

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Clare_CA

Thanks, Mark. That makes sense. Yeah, I think it was probably Home Depot or possibly Logee's, and I know I have a few Dwarf Cav's planted somewhere but things got moved, and tags were lost. Thanks so much. This one does get a lot of chicken poop. I didn't know that Cav's were especially susceptible to that. Good to know:-) Yes, I think it is flowering at around 6'.

venturabananas

Yep, too much chicken poop (composted in my case) did exactly that to my dwarf Cav as well as to my Goldfinger.

How are your bananas doing with this little cold snap? Mine seem to be in suspended animation -- not growing a bit, but otherwise look fine so far.

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Clare_CA

Hi Mark, that's good to know. I think Andrew has chickens and bananas too and was saying that he lets his chicken poop dry out for about a week so that's what I've been doing, but some fresh stuff gets swept on top of them too, but it doesn't get to the roots that quickly so I haven't been too worried about burn. I have a plumeria actually in the ground in the chicken run, and I sweep fresh chicken poop underneath that tree all the time, and I have yet to see sign of burn on that particular plumeria. In fact, it looks incredibly healthy.

I just got through emptying a bin full of week-old chicken poop at the base of the variegated and other bananas. It's probably not the best time of year to do this, but the bin was full and needed emptying. I'm swamped with work and deadlines right now, but when work slows down or grinds to a halt, as it sometimes does, I'll invite you over for a banana tour:-)

Same here on the cold snap, but this Cavendish is already showing it's second hand of bananas. Oh, and I just found a second flower on the Raja Puri too!

venturabananas

Hi Clare,

Congrats on all the flowering bananas you have! Whenever you have time for a banana plantation tour, let me know.

I don't think there is anything especially bad about chicken poop -- it's just that it is very nitrogen rich, which makes it more prone to overfertilize than many other fertilizers. As it was explained to me, it isn't actually the nitrogen that is the problem, it is that calcium doesn't move through the tissues as fast as nitrogen, so if your soil is on the calcium-poor side, high fertilizer doses will result in bent and burnt leaves, from too little calcium in the tissues. Apparently Cavendish clones are especially susceptible, but other cultivars can have these kinds of problems, too, if you really dump on the fertilizer.

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