Originally Posted by geissene

Tytaylor: I will do VC updates next year!

So my dwarf orinoco is pretty much done making small fruits. The picture below was taken this morning. Every day, another petal falls off and so do the tiny flowers. Several rounded abdomen wasps are still on the flowers from morning till night!

I ended up with 4 hands and finger counts of 8, 8, 7, and 2 from top to bottom. So there is a potential to have 25 bananas before the first frost! This happens usually in mid-November.

I do have some thoughts on areas to improve my method for next year.

1. In early spring, I planted the bare root orinoco outdoors. It took about an entire month before there were signs of leaf growth. As we know, the corm is growing new roots before it pushes leaves.
   
   Perhaps I can give the roots a head-start on the spring season by potting up the dormant plant prior to putting outside. This would allow the roots to develop faster. Maybe with the aide of a burlap sack I can keep the new roots intact as I transfer back into the ground.
2. Last fall, I let the plant's leaves die off with the first hard frost. I then cut the petioles back to the p-stem with a scissors in prepartion to move the plant indoors. What I noticed was the petioles continued to weep sap for several days after being cut! This must equate to lost energy and perhaps is part of the reason some people's plants 'rot away' over the winter.
   
   This year, I plan to just cut away the dried/dead leaf material but keep the petioles (maybe just bend them down and tie/tape to the p-stem). I plan to do this with my basjoo as well since they had the same issue!

This year, I have another equally sized orinoco that I can experiment with that should fruit next summer. Hopefully with these tweaks and whatever ideas other people suggest, I can get more than 25 potential bananas next year!!!

Regards,

Erik G in Pennsylvania