P-stem is currently about 3' (it was around 4' when I trimmed it back last month).
4/27
4/28
4/29
I received the plant in the mail on 1/28/2012 as a 2" tall tissue culture plant from Wellspring Gardens. Here's a pic of it then (from left to right: Gran Nain, Dwarf Red, Dwarf Cavendish, and Truly Tiny)--
Here it is right after I planted it 15 months ago:
Here it is in October after a good summer of growth (very center of 1st pic just right of the papaya; hiding in the background just left of the Dwarf Red in the 2nd pic):
Unfortunately all of the bananas stopped growing at that point. By January the leaves were all half yellow and by March they were all dead/yellow. I recently cut all the pstems back till I found green, and they all began to leaf back out. The DC only managed to push out 4 leaves before sending up the flag, though, so I may end up trimming off half the hands in order to get the remaining hands to fill out well.
If the bananas hadn't all stopped growing in October, I think the plant would have flowered sometime in November with a dozen or so big green leaves to power it. The bananas grew fine through their first winter (when they first arrived as tiny tc's), but I nearly killed them in October when I had to shut down the system's water circulation for a couple of days. I had some supplemental aeration going, but it wasn't good enough and the plants basically almost all drowned (all growth immediately stopped and didn't resume till I cut them back about a month ago). Furthermore, whereas during the 1st winter I bounced a lot of extra sunlight into the greenhouse (keeping it both warmer and brighter), this past winter the plants had to make-do with less light and heat because I built a structure just south of it (only place I could put it) last summer that unfortunately blocks a lot of that 'extra' light.
But oh well. Far from ideal, but I'm not complaining. Down the road I'll pamper them better; for now I'm happy to have my first flag leaf.
