TedW

I live in the desert but my banana plants are going to be planted in the desert soil in the greenhouse that has 30% shade cloth above it. What would be the best mix for the soil for my banana plants.?

AaronTT

Can you describe your desert soil? Is it more clay, sand, rocky, etc?

cincinnana

If you do a Youtube search with keywords "growing in desert soil" you will find many videos of what other folks are doing to improve the soil quality for growing an array of plants.

Pick and choose what amendments are best for you.

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wstrickland1

I may soon be googling "can I grow bananas in Las Vegas". True story, maybe

Cowlevel

Hi Ted,

I also live in Phoenix. See below for a pic of my banana area. I may not have done the best thing, but for me, it seems to be working. What I did here was take a pick-axe to the ground, roughly 10-12" deep to break it up. My soil is mostly clay with many 1" rocks in it and caliche at about the 12-18" area. After breaking up the ground well, I then mixed at aprox 1:1:1/2 by volume of : native soil : kellogs garden soil (cheap red bag at home depot): sand. It may not be the best, but they seem to like it and grow well and pup well as well. I try to keep at least 6-10" of yard waste on top at all times, primarily its chipped up tecoma shrubs.

I feed with a mixture of the arizonas best all purpose or arizonas best citrus, plus 0-0-60 potash. I also use fertigation for general purpose so they get a trickle of liquinox in the water. I dont bother trying to go organic on bananas, they need so much food.

They had a tiny west only shade cloth that was about 2' high for the first summer. They quickly outgrew that and have been full sun since, on the south side of the house.