JoeReal

That is true Mike! Some of us are content to watch them grow. Some of us would like the challenge of growing them when everyone else says you can't. Of course most of us will try to minimize our costs whenever we can. Just like bananalover, I do try to keep my costs down in various places, but then I balance this with quality materials versus the resources that I have, be it time or money as the constraints, or the wife's approval. I no longer wanted to plant tall varieties, nor the cold sensitive ones. If they will survive in the insulated pot or in the ground outside during the winter, then they stay, otherwise, I will send them off to people interested in this forum.

I save mostly with non-banana plants where I do grafting and budding when acquiring new varieties in exchanges. I get to test and taste them out in my yard conditions without buying the whole tree ($10 - $50 each).

I do produce fruits that lb for lb are a lot cheaper than the stores, and these are my persimmons, oranges, lemons, calamondins and kumquats. I basically let them be and have yielded plenty for me. Lemons especially, sometimes they go for more than $1 each fruit past spring time and I have them year round and they don't require much care unlike the rest of my fruiting plants.

I believe if I have enough space, bananas could be in the range where it can become cheaper, my comparison are not the sweet cavendish types, but the cooking types. Plantains usually sell for more than $1/lb, and most of the cold-hardy types that will fruit here are on the plantain side.

I just want to say that there are pluses and minuses and we are also here to share tips that could help us bring some costs down.