MediaHound

Finally, after waiting about three years, my praying hands (from TC) has bloomed!











These pics were taken a few days ago, its since opened up many more hands and its a wonderful sight! I will post more pictures.

I took it upon myself to attempt to separate a very large "pup" and the following pictures are basically how not to separate a banana plant



^ That's not snow, thats corm.







It snapped off a bit too high. Sometimes these will make it, sometimes not.
This one looks a bit too high but we shall see... I should have cut it sooner, it was my fault, really. Once they get too large, its very hard to break it away from the rest of the plant while keeping enough corm and roots intact.
Anyway, hope you enjoy the closeups of the flowers and I'll post some pics of the praying hands soon. The fingers are stuck together and it looks like two hands together, praying.

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chong

Very pretty! Reminds me of the clumps of them behind our house at Ft. McKinley in the Philippines. They were next to several Saba and Butuan clumps. They were pretty much the same height and girth as the Saba.

It was a chore to separate/peel the hands to make banana chips. We always ignored the fruit of the Sabang Dikit (Saba stuck-together, our name for M. Praying Hands) and never tell our Mom, until they are ripe. If she finds out, she'll have us cut it down while green and have us peel the hands carefully to minimize cutting into the pulp, to make banana chips. The chips keep longer without refrigeration, obviously. When they are ripe, they are easy to peel, but we have to cook them right away.

Funny, over here, banana chips are salted. We used to sprinkle ours with sugar after frying. Or, if I was ambitious, I'd even glaze them. But never salted them.

dablo93

thanks for those pics!! really special banana, and sorry for your pup

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sandy0225

If you have a pond with a stream or waterfall, try putting the white end of that broken off pup in the waterfall or stream. Lots of them broken off that far down will root that way.

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Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

cactus6103

Beautiful! Red

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Family, Friends and Bananas

bencelest

Amazing!
I love the close up pictures.
Sorry to hear about the pup. They all look so healthy. I hope mine will look that way some day.
The soil appears to be well drained and sandy. Right?

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Banana Nut

MediaHound

Thanks for the comments everyone!
Yes this soil is rich, well drained, and a little bit sandy.
This banana plant gets a lot of water there from a sprinkler directly on it and it's also partially shaded by a Live Oak tree as well.

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mskitty38583

love the pics, hopefully you can get the pup to root. keeping my fingers crossed.

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microfarmer

They look delicious! 3 years to a bloom, huh? looks like mine has 2 more to go...

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STEELVIPER

Toast to your success.

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bigdog

Been there...done that! Er, cut a pup too high up that is, not get a Praying Hands to flower. Thanks for the pics, Jarred.

Frank

NANAMAN

Beautiful pictures Jarred!!! I'm curious, why so long to fruit? Do you think its because of partial shade?

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MediaHound

Perhaps if it had more light it would have bloomed sooner. I also could have removed pups as they appeared, I allowed the pups to grow unattended. This made for a voluminous plant, perhaps I could have focused the energy better by culling pups.
It was from tissue culture, so I also think because of this, it needed an additional season to gear up.
In all actuality, I probably would have had 3 blooms this year, the next up is almost the same size as the mother plant, and the third was very large as well, as you can see in the pics where I finally attempted it's removal. I think the second may bloom in a couple months, we shall see.

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Greenie

congrats!

MediaHound

OK I harvested these and the thread with those pics is here:
My Praying Hands Harvest, 2008

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Dean W.

Jarred, did the pup that snapped off survive?

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MediaHound

Perhaps I could have soaked it in a bucket to root and planted it but I didn't bother, shortly after it snapped, three pups took its place. I left it out in the grass for a bit to watch it, some eyes seemed to form around the base but eventually it dried out as I didn't give it the first aid it could have used. I'm moving and so at the time, I knew I would be digging the main corm and chopping it up into smaller more manageable sizes sometime soon anyway.

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