OkieBananaNut

I'm pretty pumped about my two Okie bananas this summer and would like to share. I've got one Musa Double and Ice Cream I transplanted a couple of months ago into larger pots now out on the driveway. The pots are the $20-25 jobs at Walmart that are made from some kind of lightweight material that should facilitate moving both indoors when those nasty Oklahoma winters hit. We had our worst snowstorm in 100 years this past winter (nearly 2 feet of snow here) and my two bananas were quite happy in a bright window by the front of the house during that time. Was an interesting contrast seeing snow up to the windows with my bananas slowly, but happily putting out new growth.

Purchased the plants last summer from floridahillnursery on Ebay. They were quite small but arrived in excellent condition and by all accounts have done great since. Paid $8 and $10 each for the plants. My guess is that they've easily quintupled in size and weight since that time.

I've learned a little trick with drainage on the plants that I think might be contributing to their happiness. I drilled some holes in the bottom of the pot - but here's the deviation from what is the norm - I lined the bottom of the pot not with gravel or other rocky material as is usually universally suggested but with porous weed blocking fabric. To me this serves a couple advantages. Soil doesn't end up clogging the drainage holes as is my past experience and none of it gets washed away in the process either. I think that if the roots do penetrate deeper they'll also have a little more room to spread out than they would if rocky material was on the bottom. Plus I would imagine this reduces the overall weight of the pot as well.

I also water exclusively with rainwater collected from my 4 barrel, 200 gallon collection system around the back of the house. Ground up light colored wood mulch seems to keep moisture held into the pots as well. And boy do these guys drink. I watered both last night with a full gallon each of water and noted no overflow drainage out the bottom of the pots. Of course the pots are deep and there's a lot of soil there so I imagine it could take that much water - perhaps more.

As you can tell by the pictures of the plants in my gallery they are growing like weeds now and putting out a new leaf about every other day in our 90+ degree heat here. We had some pretty harsh wind the last couple of weeks which didn't help the appearance of the older shredded leaves but the bananas don't seem to care. I figured they hail from hurricane countries so they are probably used to such treatment.

I'm also now a proud papa of four pups on the Musa Double plant! It's my understanding I need to wait about a year before separating them from the momma plant correct?

I'm also a big fan of Spray N Grow and am wondering what effects the liquid gold might have on the plants.

Thanks for your indulgence....
John