lkstapleton

MV8R, since it gets into the teens, you might consider using big containers and putting them on wheels, because you might have to pull them in on your coldest nights.

Lisa

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venturabananas

Lisa, have any of those varieties produced fruit for you? I ask because my mom lives in San Jose, too, and she'd like to replace the non-edible bananas (basjoo and balbisiana) with fruiting ones. I was thinking Dwarf Namwah and Dwarf Brazilian because they are among the least cold sensitive ones I grow, and they taste great and don't get too tall.

-- Mark

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lkstapleton

Hi, Mark. I got into growing bananas about three years ago, so a lot of my stuff is still young. I have personally had California Gold and Dwarf Orin. flower, and I think Kandrian will flower in a few weeks. Also, I know someone nearby in Fremont who has grown huge clumps of Ice Cream, Sweetheart and Goldfinger and has gotten enormous hands of bananas. Those are the only varieties where I have absolute proof that it's possible. I am working on Raja Puri, Ice Cream, Monkey Fingers, Veinte Cohol, Manzano, Goldfinger, Sweetheart, and Texas Star, but they are all young.

Lisa

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venturabananas

Thanks for the info Lisa. Best of luck with your bananas. -- Mark

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sunfish

MV8R

Tony,
that sounds like a rhetorical question, however, my understanding as a newbie is that the plants tend to flower at a certain height depending on the type, so a fast grower that flowers at 10 feet maybe no quicker to flower than a slower grower that flowers at 5 feet. If the slower grower has a shorter cycle from flower to fruit, slower growth is not a bad thing.

MV8R

Thanks for the tip. I'm considering designing a lightweight, temporary cover for the smaller palnts for the month or so that temps may dip that low. I have a few thermostatic vents I can install to prevent over heat from ground warmth and sun and the cover would not contact the plants. I have no covenants, home owners association, or city ordinances that would prevent me from doing so.

venturabananas

That's an interesting way to think about growth in bananas, and logical, but not at all the way I think about it. I think of growth rate in bananas as the speed at which new leaves are produced -- I suspect most other banana growers do, too. Given that there is a genetically determined number of leaves that will be produced before a flower bud is initiated, it is more informative than height, at least in that height at flowering can be quite variable for a cultivar depending on the environmental conditions it experiences.

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sunfish

or Vice-versa.

robert0514

Maybe try miss bordelon, flowers within 6 months even if it has died back over winter however the quality of the fruit varies from plant to plant, so sometimes it won't be edible.

PR-Giants

Height and growth cycles depend on genetics, buts also on plant crop, first ratoon, and second ratoon. Within a cultivar, cycle times from plant to bloom can vary dramatically, while flower to fruit cycle times are more constant.

"There are considerable variations between cultivars in terms of time taken before flowering, time taken from flowering to bunch maturity and total time from planting to bunch maturity. This can be explained by the innate genetic variability of these cultivars. Banana cultivars can generally be categorized as early, medium and late maturing ones. It is, however, interesting to note that cultivars which took shorter time to shooting, are also normally earlier in attaining maturity."

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lkstapleton

I have a related question. I have a banana that died back to just the flag leaf and one other small leaf, but the little guy is putting out flowers and bananas. I heard that you need at least 4 or 5 leaves to actually get ripe fruit, so I'm wondering if I shouldn't get my hopes up, or if the fruit could actually ripen? So far, it looks like I have about 30 small ones, about 4 inches long, and the flower looks like it is just getting started. I am not sure of the variety, but I have planted California Gold, Sweetheart, Ice Cream, Goldfinger and Monkey FIngers.

I am in the SF Bay Area, in San Jose, and it's in a very sunny spot.

Lisa

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Abnshrek

All you can do is feed it and hope for the best.. If it has pups leave them alone till you get the bounty, and if it doesn't have pups you can feed it a liquid rooting hormone (greenlight), and they will pop up in a hurry or you can use Tony's 1st place Fert.. :^)

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venturabananas

It's not a sure thing, but you could get fruit without any leaves. I have, but it probably depends on the health of the corm, the other shoots in the mat, etc.

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venturabananas

So you are saying it is a sure thing that there will be no more filling of fingers if all the leaves die? I can assure you that I've had fingers on Dwarf Red and Williams continue to fill with no living leaves, and the peduncle did not rot. My neighbor's Namwa do the same (when her son prunes off any tattered leaves, which results in p-stems with a bunch but no leaves). I won't claim I know where the nutrients are coming from, either from the corm, other plants in the mat, or from the persisting photosynthesizing leaf sheaths on the p-stem with the bunch, but they come from somewhere.

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venturabananas

I think you are probably right. In a bit of searching, I could not find any published research that supported my claim. To be clear, I was not saying that a plant will make some magic number of leaves and then fruit (though you can certainly find stuff on the internet that makes that claim). I was trying to say that some cultivars make more leaves on average before fruiting than others. But as I said, I can't find any data that support that claim. I also could't find any data that refuted it, but I wouldn't bet money on it.

Is it humorous and sad, really? I understand where the meristem is, but that has nothing to do with how many leaves are produced before flower initiation. Unless you count all the leaves produced before flowering by many plants of different varieties, I'm not sure how you could figure out if different varieties make different numbers of leaves. I'm pretty compulsive, but not enough to do the necessary counting. (But the answer is 36 for one Dwarf Brazilian in my yard.)

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sandy0225

Someone mentioned border on as a fruiting option. I've bloomed dozens of them, they don't produce fruit at all. So scratch that one, it's only ornamental

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Sandy Burrell



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