KokoTheMonkey

Yo, it's been ages since I've been here, and also ages since I've had my banana plant fruit. It's a long story but I somehow found myself on this forum again (was totally not looking for bananas) and remembered that I very selfishly kept things to myself. I will share here, any vet growers (I am seriously just a lucky amateur) can comment and say if it's pure luck or whether I actually did everything right. It has been awhile, so some info is a bit hazy. Another thing that is hazy is the actual cultivar I had. I know I had a Musa Velutina, but the other one was either a Super Dwarf Cavendish or some other Dwarf Cavendish that for some reason fruited at around 7 feet (it was around 2 meters, including container). I'm in Europe, and here nobody knows a damn thing about banana trees. I got tired of hearing "Super? Dwarf Cavendish?" and finally just bought a thing that looked close enough.

Also, this method is bat**** crazy. You have been warned.

Substrate: 99% sure I used a combination of Vermiculite, Coco peat (Those bricks you add water to and "Tada!" instant substrate) and organic compost. Container I believe was 50cm (20") in diameter. Maybe larger.

During growing season I gave it a lot of liquid fertilizer for fruit? I believe. It was the closest thing to whatever was recommended here for bananas. It smelled horrible, that's for sure. I tried to find it online at a store to confirm but I can't find it. It was nothing special, probably 10-10-10 or something. I mixed in small amounts during watering.

Watering: I kept giving it small amounts of water throughout the day. I would water it and try to give as much as possible while not having anything drain through to the dish. I said small amounts, but the thing was thirsty like crazy. I could not gather enough rain water, I think the substrate was a bit on the acidic side, so I had a lot of leeway with alkaline tap water. I think the tap water here is pretty high quality too. I wouldn't dare water it with highly chlorinated water as it is in some countries. Traditional wisdom states that you don't water during sunlight hours, I did. I watered before the sun would start shining on it, but the ground would be parched after a few hours, and the plant would definitely drink up quite a bit since I could easily notice any water not used by the plant ending up in the dish. Either way, the dish method is something I still use with other plants, it's one of the best watering methods I found for tropical plants.

So I believe there's 2 ways to do this. You can either end up with massive mold in your house/apartment, or you can do what I did, get a big big glass "closet'. I hope "Vitrine" is the right word, this is a big glass closet which is usually used for showcasing Anime figurines, Movie merchandise and other nerdy stuff. I saw the 2 meter tall by 2 meter wide by 1.5 meter deep thing standing at the trash one day and a lightbulb went off in my head. To this day I have no idea how I got the thing up the stairs in one piece, but I managed. Yes. I put my damn banana in a frigging vitrine. Caveman greenhouse. But, it worked. The thing held the moisture in really well and I did not have mold all over my apartment, and I got a fruiting banana tree. Harvest was kind of disappointing. The flower was amazing, though. Worth it just for that. Although it was hard to enjoy it through the insanely foggy vitrine, although I could open the doors and take a good look at it (did not do it often out of fear of screwing things up). I think I got like 2-3 kg of bananas out of it, definitely not much. But it was really cool. Things got hectic (went abroad, when I got back someone murdered my poor banana trees, trauma ensued, Moved, moved again, etc etc).

Unfortunately growing bananas is now impossible for me. I do not have enough sunlight coming in now, and you need serious sunlight all day. I had this in the apartment where I grew them and I feel like it was just barely enough. It took 5 years but I only had the vitrine the last 2.

The Velutina is a lot easier to fruit, I got that one to fruit earlier and it was still very small. Not sure if both the bananas fruited at such small sizes due to just barely making it and remaining small due to suboptimal conditions or if it's the cultivar/specific genetics. If I did it again I would def keep the Velutina in a greenhouse too, although I did mist often, but I doubt misting is sufficient for a larger plant.

Oh yea and finally, you gotta blast the heat. But keep it away from the radiator the heat is coming from. It's very hard in a cold country to maintain the heat + moisture the plant needs, since heating gets rid of the moisture.