island cassie

At the roadside I saw these bananas and managed to get the driver to stop ( a miracle). They only had about 2ft of pstem, but they had all been hacked off with a machete. Do you think they are something like super dwarf cavendish (in which case I will go and beg a pup) or just dwarfed by the mutilation (I tend to think the latter!)

Gabe15

That fruiting one is so short because it was cut, not because its a dwarf.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

island cassie

Yes - that's what I thought! Strange to see a whole row of them cut off like that!

harveyc

Gabe, in prior discussions which you have been involved in, it's been said that cutting back a banana forces it to "reset" and delay fruiting. At Whacking to shorten mature height? you wrote "unless it is close to flowering" it will be reset. Is there some way to gauge how close is close enough, if you're trying to lower fruiting height? Is cutting back a common practice in some places to reduce fruiting height?

Thanks,

Harvey

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momoese

They must have already had the inflorescence coming up the p-stem, but then, where did those 6 leaves come from?

harveyc

I'm guessing that as long as the bloom has already started to form in the corm, there is no reversing of it. but there can still be several leaves ahead of it. Timing is critical, so I wonder how well they can time this. Can you count each leaf that emerges? Under ideal growing conditions (i.e., without my frosty winters), I would guess plants are more uniform in height and maybe some people just use height as a gauge as to when to whack them back. This might be something I'd like to try in order to over-winter a banana in fruit more easily.

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CookieCows

It would really give us zone challenged people a glimmer of hope to catch one now and then.

Deb

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Gabe15

Harvey has it right. If the flower bud is already initiated, you cannot reverse it and it will come out but there are leaves ahead of it. The reset only works if the plant is young enough that it has not come close to initiating the flower bud. I have noticed that the leaves generally stop growing taller when they hit sun light, and if there is a bud close behind then it will fruit at a lower height. But if it is a young plant and did not have any flower bud initiation, then it will continue to build pseudostem height long enough to reach the normal height. So, to a point, you can cut the plants to dwarf them, but in turn you are critically depriving them of photo synthetic capacity. The real issue is just cutting them at the right time, which I suppose comes with experience!

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

island cassie

That is the rub - how to time the cut so that the bud is still in the pstem!! I don't know the answer! By the time I see the pstem swelling - it is too late!

But if there is some way to time it - that could be very beneficial to our northern growers!

Gabe15

The time from initiation to emergence will vary by cultivar, climate and the time of year in which initiation happens. You could make some guesses, but I think to really be able to predict it well would require lots of trials and notes.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.