Vagetarian

I am going to attempt to grow fruit in my conservatory in the UK and I don't care how poor my chances are!

I can get pots up to 160L which are only 51cm tall, that leaves me with 7' from the soil level to the ceiling.

I have a SDC which is probably a very good choice but everybody seems to think they don't taste very good (I've never had anything else) so what I really want to know is...

What's the finest fruit that I can try and grow?

Richard

If you feed them enough potash and they ripen properly the SDC are super small but great tasting. What ever combination of fertilizer(s) you use, the Potash (K) should be 1.5 times the amount of Nitrogen by weight.

Given you will be in a pot and indoors, whatever you grow will be stunted in plant size, fruit quantity, and fruit size. The wild card in this will be that if they are not getting enough light in watts then the height of the plant will tend to stretch and might end up normal height.

The height issue is mostly with new leaves. Banana plants send up new leaves in the form of a cigar roll that even on Dwarf cultivars is 2-3 foot high out of the top. So if the fruiting height is 4 foot, then ceiling height should be at least 6'.

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Vagetarian

Thanks for the reply Richard.

Do they not taste just like the supermarket type Cavendish fruit?

I have quite a few banana plants here but the cigar leaf issue never occurred to me!! Good job you mentioned it. I guess I'd get away with the end of the leaf being squished up a little bit though.

I understand the light problem but I can only try. It's very bright in the summer and I'll use supplemental lighting in the winter.

Are there no other edible bananas that won't grow much above 5'?



It still looks dwarf.

Richard

Correct.

True. You could tilt your plant for a week. You don't want to impede it though by getting jammed against the ceiling.

Even though HID lamps (High Pressure sodium, mercury, etc.) are often sold as plant lights, they are a poor choice unless used as a partial supplement to real daylight -- for example in a clear greenhouse in northern latitudes. For that I would use "white mercury" type. Otherwise, if you have no or very little real daylight then the 6500 Kelvin or 7500 Kelvin fluorescents are the best choice. The issue is that regardless of bulb, you need at least 800 Watts output for the plant. That is a lot of fluorescent bulbs. 800 Watts is still low, consider that "full sun" on a summer day mid-latitude is over 1000 Watts per meter. Don't get confused by lumen measurements -- these are a measure of human visibility and not energy transmission.

The height is measured from the soil level to the crotch in the pseudo-stem just below the upper-most leaves. My Dwarf Orinoco fruits consistently in the 5' to 6' range but at that stage the upper-most leaves have surfaces at about the 8' level. The leaves function as solar panels (among other things) so no light to the upper leaves is a problem.

You could consider going over to Cambridge and asking someone from the physics department to put a very large quantum hole in your conservatory floor.

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Vagetarian

I think I really just want to grow something different. Dwarf Red caught my eye but that will probably lift the roof off.

I do have some daylight, the SDC along with the other nanas are still growing. The nights are drawing in however! I have some knowledge about lights, PAR, etc. There is usually plenty of direct light from the glazed roof above (it is about 11'x11') but the sun is getting rather low now.

Depending on the species I can probably have it outside for 5-8 months of the year, if it gets too tall. So it might not have to spend too much time pressed up against the roof.

I actually built the thing a few years ago. If I had have known I could have dug it out several feet!

Richard

Hmm ... if your timing is right you could grow Dwarf Namwa to fruiting size and then send it outside to fruit for 5-8 months.

Nice going on the conservatory, an 11' x 11' translucent roof is excellent.

PAR by itself is a poor measure, because ultimately it is the spectral distribution that is important.

For optimal performance from most budding and fruiting plants, what you want is 1200 Watts of net output directed at each 1 square meter of plant surfaces from a distance of 1 meter, AND with a color temperature of 6500 Kelvin (CIE D65):



Commercially, the 6500K high output fluorescents are the closest to this. In contrast, check out the distribution of a standard HPS lamp:

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sunfish

caliboy1994

I hear that Dwarf Namwah has very good fruit and is pretty short in the ground (6-7 feet), and I'm looking into it myself. I'm not sure how well it does in containers though, although it would be shorter in a container.

Musa Dwarf Namwah - Bananas Wiki

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Vagetarian

Thanks for the replies.. guys..

Richard, have you ever seen a plasma light? The spectrum is pretty close to the sun, they're very very expensive though!

I guess I'd have to be very lucky to time the fruiting that well but that is most certainly something I am willing to try! This is England after all and I'd have to do something pretty funky to grow bananas here. I probably could have had a banana outdoors for 9 months this year, I'm waiting for the first frost of this winter still. It was frozen this time last year.

I don't know what it's like in the US but there's obviously not a lot of demand for edible bananas in Europe and so they seem to be pretty hard to come by and availability comes and goes. Most are out of stock everywhere. I need to build a short list and then keep an eye out for them.

I passed up on Rajapuri because I thought it was ornamental!

I know most plants in pots are generally smaller but wasn't too sure whether this applied to bananas since they don't even grow a stem, I wonder how much smaller they are?

jeffreyp

truly tiny or little prince

Vagetarian

Cheers jeffrey.

From what I understand there's not much chance of fruiting Little Prince and I thought Truly Tiny was a bit like a brand name for one companies SDC TCs?

My SDC came labelled as "Musa 'Tropicana'", it was from a German chain of cheaper supermarkets that got quite popular in the UK in recent years. A little bit of researched told me that it's just a synonym for SDC.

This is my best bet for fruit I'm sure. But I'm not going to be content with that, I don't want to just be able to say "I grew nanas in the UK".

Nobody in the UK seems to realise that a banana is anything other than a Cavendish fruit (in fact it seems to be popular belief that a plantain is something totally different). If I'm going to do it, I want to do it in style! Something that looks or tastes a bit different!

Dwarf Lady Fingers seems like an option, but of course it's a case of availability.

trebor

Hmmm I think DC and SDC taste great. Also when you purchase bananas from a retail store they are picked with the intention of being packed and shipped then ripen in the store ! They taste good! They look good ! We all seem to eat them BUT when we grow them and are allowed to ripen a bit on the plant they sure seem to taste a lot better .. That's just my personal experience and opinion
I see also that Richard mentions the potash ratio.. That’s a terrific chuck of information

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Vagetarian

Indeed trebor! I grow my own tomatoes because the gas ripened supermarket ones we get here usually have absolutely no taste and very little flesh. I know what a difference growing your own can make and it's good to know that the SDC will taste better! I dare even say that our supermarket bananas might be worse than your supermarket bananas because we're so much further away from the source. But they're probably the same...

Richard has supplied me with some fantastic advice in this thread and I am very grateful to all who have replied.

I guess it may seem to you guys that I haven't really done my research because it's such a crazy idea, but I have! I've come a very long way in the last 6 months from someone just getting his first banana plant, I have a thirst for knowledge in everything and I've spent a lot of time reading and learning about bananas in general. I think that I'm ready to start my attempt now. I'm also ready for a massive failure so I won't be too disappointed, lol.

What I lack most of all is experience!

I intend to try and emulate the crawl space overwintering method in my roof next winter so I might be able to get fruit from taller varieties that way but I think it's quite unlikely. I don't get summers like bigdog gets!

Richard

Yes, but again it comes down to what plants utilize. A 5000 Kelvin plasma bulb has spectrum close to the sun but without sky reflection. A 6500 Kelvin plasma bulb is produces a spectrum that is close to ideal for plants in terms of what they process -- although the 6500K fluorescents do the same at 1/3 the purchase cost per watt.

Here's a comparison of different outdoor solar spectral densities:

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tony palmer

Supplementary light is good to have because it will enable the dwarf cav. To attain flowering height quicker as long as the temps are kept between 67 - 80f.

Supplementary light isn’t essential though! In my local Park we have an old Victorian conservatory and they have fruited dwarf cav. without the use of supplementary light in winter. It took three and a half years to achieve flowering and the overall height of the cav. including roller was 6-7ft

Obviously the lower the light levels in winter the less plant food and heat you would need, the temps must be kept above 67f though unless it produces a flag leaf! Then I would try to make it go dormant and drop the temps to 60-65f, you don’t want it to flower in winter that would affect the development of the fruit because of the low light levels… unless you then decide use supplementary light.

Tony

Vagetarian

Cheers Richard, don't get me wrong I'm not planning on getting any plasma lamps just yet... the fluoros will do for now!

And thank you Tony, I think we've met elsewhere!

I have a 45W CFL directly above the SDC and that's all it's going to get this winter, I'm sure it would be fine without it as the room is almost as sunny as can be.

I have finally found a supplier in Austria and preordred a Dwarf Orinoco and Dwarf Red for next spring! Dwarf Orinoco sounds like a good choice for fruiting outdoors and overwintering dormant. And Dwarf Red is well... red!

Richard

The SDC will be a happy camper.

Way to go. The Dwarf Orinoco will have the fastest maturation rate (time to flowering) in your cultivation plan. The fruit flavor is sub-acid, kind of like banana with a hint of plum. Our family likes it.

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Vagetarian

That sounds good, fingers crossed I might get to taste one someday! So long as they don't die in the roof.

The SDC will be the fail safe.

Darkman

Does the DO taste different than the standard Orinoco?

My standard Orinoco has a hint of Blackberry taste in it.

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Richard

That's an interesting way to describe the sub-acid flavor. I have not tasted the standard Orinoco.

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