pjkfarm

Hello everyone,
I am new to this group but have had a couple of bananas for a number of years as attractions for the school kids who come here on field trips. We are in the process of turning the entire operation over to a perpetual charitable organization as there is no educational facility here in Washington, D.C. to educate children about the importance of plants to our life here on earth. (We are in suburban Northern Virginia, surrounded by housing – the last large piece of undeveloped land near Dulles International Airport – some 400 odd acres of family farm). Education is critical for future leaders – too many current ones appear to have detached themselves from their roots in the land – and we believe that by providing fun, challenging and, at times, astonishing experiences in nature that these kids will view nature and the environment they live in differently. Bananas are plants which get big “Wows”, along with the various Colocasia/Alocasia/xanthosomas and their huge leaves. Last year we had almost 40,000 children visit, feeding bamboo to the goats and sheep we let them interact with, taking hay rides, wandering trough a large bamboo maze (we also provide spring shoots to the pandas at the National Zoo) and generally having a fun time in the open air.
With so much competition from TV and the smart phone, we are hoping that the WOW! Factor of bananas and the Colocasia/Alocasia will help kids focus on something real. The U.S. Botanic Garden and the National Arboretum have been generous contributors of plant material, but bananas and the Aroids are not part of their focus, so we are always on the lookout for additional donations. The South Riding Community Garden Club is part of the education program and is a 501(c)3 charitable organization (and is a part of the Amazon Smile program where Amazon donates a percentage of what they sell to our supporters) and we are applying for 501(c)3 status for the gardens which we are building for the children’s educational facility. The garden club has been very successful in getting parents with their kids into growing things with some 250 people participating.
We have lots of Colocasia esculenta (Elephant ears), (with hopefully other varieties this year if weather cooperates) and many cacti for trade or donation to other charitable organizations. And as newbies in the banana world, I am sure we will have lots of questions. Luckily a neighbor comes from Mexico where he had a banana plantation, so knows something about growing them – in fact brought us our first one! What we are looking for are plants that make kids go Wow1 – size, color, leaf size, etc. The bigger or more unusual the better for our purposes, with taste (or even no fruit) not relevant – kids look for color and size, though if we could get some to flower that would be great – and with a greenhouse for farm crops, we might be able to do that with some practice – at least for one or two as we do not have a lot of spare space. We have one Musa basjoo which has done well, but not sure of what variety it might be as we have seen others called basjoo which look different. We have a very good root cellar where we store the one banana we have (or better say, its corms). Temp gets to low 40’s but the corms have done well for a number of years – and now have maybe 15, some of which we pot up in March, the rest we simply put out in May and let them do their thing – at end of season we will have 8-12 foot plants with plenty of great leaves.
Any suggestions as to names we should be getting would be welcome, and of course any “pups”. We are also curious as to how best to over winter plants other than in a root cellar as corms. As we have limited room in the greenhouse, is there a way of keeping them without lots of room? Just saw a picture relating to choking re Orinoco – and it showed leafless stems which had just been planted – they were pretty tall, like 4 to 6 feet, so wonder where they had been stored or how they had been stored. As an educational facility doing a good deal of research on various plants (we were the first commercial grower in the USA of the plant which now provides the main Malaria drug worldwide -Artemisia annua), we should be able to get germplasm from GRIN and other facilities – but generally that is very small, not to mention we have no idea of what would be best for our purposes (stimulate an interest in plants and the environment).
Long post, but hopefully we can learn something – and get help as we grow more.
Peter