Quote:
Originally Posted by geissene
The Veinte cohol grows easier and bigger for me. The patupi produced more edible fruit. I kept both in 15 gallon pots. Timing is key - you need a flower to emerge about 2 months before the cool weather comes and you also want your plant to have 8+ full size leaves for fruit to fill / ripen fast. Having both happen is not likely. I've given up with fruiting AAs. I still keep Patupi because it looks nice, but I mainly grow ABBs because they can handle the cold weather better.
Erik
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Thanks. I've been reading through your backlog of posts trying to learn as much as I can!
I see my hope for a single summer fruiting was overly optimistic, but I'm now cautiously optimistic that my parents place (they're in like a weird 5b/possibly 6a microclimate on the side of a hill in central NH) could be a good fruiting option. Their deck gets lots of sun, and in the winter there's a spot in the great room that gets indirect light and never drops below 50F where I overwintered a Mahoi last winter.
The biggest thing I'm trying to figure out for VC/patupi right now is the "how cold is too cold," because their location only has maybe 8 weeks of the year when the evening temperature is reliably above 60F, but 12-16 weeks above 50F. I've managed to fruit hot peppers there that have a 120 day growing season by starting them inside in February under grow lights and moving them outside in June.
So basically I'm wondering if it makes sense to select a different cultivar of banana that is a little less "short season" but a little more robust to the cold (but a little more interesting/exotic than what I have, which are several kinds of dwarf cavendish, plus what is probably a tall namwah I'm keeping stunted in my own living room down near Boston, and not trying to fruit, at least yet).
What are ABBs?
edit: got it
https://www.promusa.org/ABB+genome+group
Quote:
Originally Posted by cincinnana
I have grown both plants in zone 5/6.
With 150+day grow window it is difficult to get these plants to flower.
The plants are daylight and cool sensitive and do not work well without some winter heroics with supplemental lighting for 7 months.
The plants will have a larger footprint to overwinter indoors making them difficult to light.
Both plants do well in the south and tropics.
In our zone expect a flower in 3-5 years.
Geissene is the only forum member in the far north that has gotten documented fruit.
I suspect Subsonicdrone will be next 
Go ahead and try growing Patupi and closely observe the way the plants react to your grow zone and overwintering....these plants will teach you something. |
I sent a DM to you because I wasn't sure if you'd ever gotten anything to fruit! Thanks for clearing that up. I saw that you seemed skeptical/frustrated of both of these cultivars so I was interested in your opinion. Will be setting my expectations accordingly.
I actually had to plan some interior landscaping for my new office, which has huge southern facing windows, and I made sure we picked a couple of banana plants. They get rolled outside in the summer and inside behind those windows in the winter, so we'll see...