RobG7aChattTN

Hey everyone, I was wondering how speed of growth is effected due to a Musa being grown from seed, tissue culture, and from a pup. Specifically I was wondering in relation to peoples' experiences with Thai Black (or Black Thai). It seems that some folks have experienced extremely fast growth while others (me) have had extremely slow plants. One person stated that they went from a 2" plug to over 8' in 4 months. I had a plant that I got on eBay that went from 10" to 15" over the summer...so a lot slower than I had hoped. Of course there could be issues with soil, moisture, and fertilizers...but I was wanting to see what others have observed. I may be off a bit, but from my experiences pups generally start out larger, sulk for a little while and then take off. Tissue culture tends to be very iffy at first (and I really haven't had any take off much after). Seed grown also seem quite slow at first, but maybe more stable when they are small than similarly sized TC. My observations are too limited to really make any generalities...so how about you? Thanks for any input!

Gabe15

Environmental conditions are causing your slow growth, not the way the plant was produced. If given optimum conditions, they would all be the same eventually. The time when there would be some differences is right when you start them and when they are young, as you observed. TC plants are generally quicker to start growing in the ground compared to bare root suckers, but this is because TC plants already have a well developed root system, whereas suckers have to wait a bit until they have enough roots to support new growth. Seedlings on the other hand are so slow at first because they are so small, it takes some time for them to get going sometimes.

Rarely, you may get a TC plant that has mutated and is a poorer grower than a sucker or seed grown plant, but to verify this would take a lot more than observing a single plant growing in a container. You would need a large field planting to compare with.

So, in practice, you may notice some distinct growth differences between these forms, even of the same variety, but if they were side by side, all treated the same way, and were all about the same size and with good root systems, there would be no difference.

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RobG7aChattTN

Hey Gabe, thanks for the information. I'm not sure what affected the growth of this one (started in a pot and planted out) but I got very poor performance from a velutina and a yunnanensis which I blamed the harsh winter on and assumed that they got corm damage. In the same conditions and same soil my sikkimensis hybrid and my balbisiana did just great and grew quite well. Maybe I over fertilized the smaller Musa and the larger ones were able to take the excess better. All I used was composted manure and mulch tea...but maybe too much of it. Hopefully they will pull through this winter and I'll try and leave them alone until they put more size on them. Thanks for your insight on seed grown vs. TC vs. pups!