jbclem

When I've planted bananas outside, they've been in 4'x4' raised boxes with 24" sides. The soil here is sandy silt/silty sand, and no one would ever accuse it of holding moisture for very long. I'm actually adding peat moss and compost to some of my raised beds just so I can grow vegetables in the summer...I end up watering so much, to keep them from wilting, the vegetables eventually die from what I would guess is rot from too much watering.

So the problem with bananas and rot is a bit puzzling. Maybe it is the plastic ground tarps I leave on during the winter months. Next winter hopefully I'll have some in-ground bananas to experiment with and I'll try to remove the plastic in between rains.

Temperaturewise, this has been a fairly mild winter, a couple of times down to 29F and 700-1000 chill hours according to nearby weather stations. I'm thinking I'll wait for ground temperatures of 60-65F before I plant. I'm so paranoid about the root rot that I usually wait too long to plant bananas and lose months of growing time.