TTP, Fred

All,

I posted a couple of photos of my ice cream bananas, a zebrina which bananaman88 traded with me, and a general view of my yard.

Re: the ice creams--both flowered around 5/31 (see other photos). On 6/9, I posted more photos showing the emerging bananas and the supports I made. On about 8/23, I cut the flowers off both plants. By that time, the flowers extended well over a foot below the bananas, and I read at http://webebananas.com/culture.html that doing so may allow the fruit to mature quicker (If I were smart, I would have only cut one flower, to see the difference in the way the two plants reacted....sigh...). I can tell you this, the bananas started plumping after I cut the flowers.

I'm figuring on taking a hand off in about a month to see how it ripens and tastes.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Questions?

dablo93

thanks for that site!

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Bananaman88

I think you should be OK trying a hand by then. If you aren't seeing any color change on the stalk, they should ripen quickly once you cut them. Great job! Those are both really nice bunches of fruit for this area. Have you tried to count how many individual fingers you have? And don't say 8.....!

TTP, Fred

Each plant has a little over 60 bananas...so that's about 120 total.

There's a huge Ice Cream plant adjacent to the left one, and I'm thinking it should be sending out a flag pretty soon. It was an original pup, so the only thing I can think is that so much of the corm's energy is being used on the plant with the fruit. I'm guessing it will flag as soon as I cut the bananas off the left one (the one it shares a corm with).

There's an adolescent Ice Cream plant adjacent to the right one, which should send out a flag around August of '09.

I planted 2 other Ice Cream pups in other areas of my back yard 'round about the end of July. Given that it takes about 14 months from planting until flowering, I expect they'll be flowering in September of '09. This means they'll be susceptible to a freeze. I'm thinking that if I cultivate pups beginning in January '09 and later kill off the mother plants, they should be putting out flags in March of '10, and bananas should be ready by July of '10. Does that sound sensible? I'd like to get to a point where the bananas will be maturing in the summer months as opposed to being susceptible to freeze.

Thoughts? Experiences? Comments?