Thread: california gold
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Old 06-16-2012, 01:54 AM   #5 (permalink)
harveyc
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Location: Isleton, Calif
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Name: Harvey
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Default Re: california gold

Claude, where are you from? How large is your Cal Gold?

I've been growing bananas for about seven years and California Gold for maybe five of those. I moved one I had last year around the beginning of May, I believe, and it flowered about a month later. It gave off several pups last year and one of those is now flowering. That's pretty good in my book since that pup is flowering less than a year after it emerged and we had a pretty cold winter here in NorCal. We had 35 mornings with frost and one morning dropped down to at least 22F (the local weather station reported 18F but my thermometers didn't show that low but I recently heard that at a similar elevation 10 miles away got down to 14F). But our days were pretty warm this winter, just a lot of cold nights. This meant all of the leaves were dead but the growth inside the pseudostem still stayed in good shape since the center of the pseudostems didn't get to freezing when we just had freezing temperatures for 4-6 hours.

Ideally, if you are in an area with cold conditions you'd like your plant to be at least 4-6 leaves away from flowering before you head into winter so that it will have some leaves the following spring before it flowers. My California Gold is about 6' tall now. On the other hand, I have another banana that was about 10' tall going into the winter and it flowered in March without any new leaves emerging besides on adjoining pups/plants. It will be challenging for those fruit to develop well. I also had one of these flower in November and that flower bud froze.

Good luck,

Harvey
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