harveyc

I traded for this banana a few years ago and it came to me as "Texas Star". I don't know if my trading partner had acquired it directly from the infamous Ty Ty Nursery which coined the name or not. Based on photos I've seen from others, there seem to be different versions of "Texas Star" floating around. I had planted the original pup in a pot and then planted it outside but the following year dug up pups at the end of the year and grew them over winter in my greenhouse. Those pups then got planted into the ground around May of 2010 and I've left them there. They were the first to leaf out of my approximate 25 varieties last year and are way ahead of schedule this year even though we had 29 mornings with frost, beginning on November 8, 2011 and most recently about three weeks ago. We've had some nice daytime temperatures but nights have been fairly cold. I think it go down to around 38F last night. I'm pretty impressed with the growth of this banana and thought I'd share with some photos.

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Richard

Harvey, what a picture of toasted leaves! Whatever that plant is, clearly it is happier than the rest.

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Back in business at plantsthatproduce.com

harveyc

Yeah, the view isn't uncommon most winters, but this was worse than most. California Gold is in the photo and I've got another plant out of the photo that Gabe previously said he thought was Orinoco (sold to be as Raja Puri) and this is the only one that is growing. Hope it flowers this year so I have more to judge it on.

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sunfish

Can I want one

harveyc

If you had room, I'd make you a deal.

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bananimal

"No Room Tony"

Remember what you have said over and over.

I have no room too -- but today I brought home a big low chill unknown Florida peach tree -3" caliper. Also a Nam Doc Mai mango, 2 unknown blueberries and an unknown big pineapple. All are leftovers of a vacated local nursery. It never ends!!!

No Room Dan

momoese

Yes you "can" want one!

Magilla Gorilla

There's always room for one, two or three more plants!

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Andrew

venturabananas

Harvey, please keep us posted on which of your varieties survive this rough winter and which don't. I know there are various versions of lists of cold hardiness floating around, but your personal experiences in one location in one season will make for a really useful comparison. Practically a controlled experiment, if un-replicated!

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harveyc

Okay, will do, Mark! I walked around later yesterday and noticed some others that had some rolled up leaves showing a little green, but nothing like this "Texas Star". One very pleasant "surprise" was my variegated Tannee (sp?) which I thought might be a goner.

I lost labels on my California Cold Hardy and Ice Cream and am not sure which is which and they are also showing signs of life. My tall Namwah and my Dwarf Namwah are also alive. My California Gold don't show signs of growth yet but I'm sure they are fine. In my older patch, none of those are "known" varieties (all were mislabeled) but they are also showing some growth.

It will be interesting to see if early growth can also lead to fast growth and flowering.

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Worm_Farmer

Peach, GREAT!!!
Nam Doc,, save me some fruits! These are suppose to be the BEST tasting magon EVEr!

bananimal

Hey Mike,

You should get down here with a truck or trailer. This is a great deal!

The outfit is a commercial/wholesale grower who had a partner doing the new retail side of the business. The partner is gone and all retail stock is set aside on one area. Spent an hour there yesterday and saw peaches, nectarines, pineapples, different mangoes and citrus. And papayas, blueberries, etc, etc. Oh yeah, I saw one Nam Doc Mai left for 25 bucks.

The point is the grower wants to return to only wholesale and wants to unload all the retail stock - sooner the better. And there is a discount on all unknown stuff - not labeled or tagged.

I'm gonna inform my rare fruit tree club tonight about this deal and I'm sure a bunch of them will decend like locusts and clean him out. The same way they grabbed all those banana pups and fruit from Nick. The club has made 3 trips and a 4th one is planned. Last I heard Nick will be there till end of March.

Dan

Basjoofriend

I also had frost one night last year with 28F, and most of my bananas were frozen, but most of them survived! Even the huge disease resistent banana from Embrapa, Mysore and Musa basjoo were still happy and came back very quickly, also Musa "Prata Zulú" came back quickly, fairly hardy. I do have enough place for your bananas here in Brazil, but there is a problem with import restrictions of Brazil, and it is unfortunately not good to ship banana plants or rhizomes to Brazil from the USA and Europe, only seeds will be okay. But I have luck in Brazil, Figo is another name for Orinoco, Prata is another name for Tall Brazilian, Roxa and Vinho another name for Dwarf or Tall Red and probably is Nanição an alias name for Dwarf Cavendish. Prata Zulú is close related with Orinoco, relatively hardy and did not loose its pseudotrunks by the frost here.

Best wishes
Basjoofriend

harveyc

Joachim, with only one night of frost and only dropping down to 28F, I would not expect much damage at all to post bananas, though duration has a lot to do with the extent of damage. There have been some winters when I've only had 4-5 nights of frost and my bananas looked great that winter. Usually nights down to 28F don't have enough hours of cold to do very serious damage. My coldest night this year dropped down to 22F-25F, depending on which thermometer I place my faith in. A local weather station reported 18F but I don't think that's right. This was one of the colder winters we've had, largely because of having a severe drought and lack of cloud cover. At the same time, our days during most of the cold events have warmed up pretty good so our days were warmer than normal but our nights were colder than normal.

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buffy

Harvey: That's crazy. I'm in Zone 8A. The coldest I've gotten at my house is 27.4F this winter.

harveyc

Yeah, Buffy, it was a fairly strange year overall but it's not uncommon for us to get down to the mid-20s and maybe once every 10-15 years we get down into the very low 20s. In January 2007 it got down to 20.4F here and prior to that back in December 1990 we got very cold before we moved to my hometown farming area.

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harveyc

Only the "Texas Star" has significant growth so far but I noticed today that my Pisang Klotek has a green cigar leaf showing. I was afraid it was a goner so that was a pleasant surprise. Maybe some day I'll actually get fruit as well!

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