Good Small Varieties?
Hi,
I'm a new member here, looking for some advice. Several years ago, I had a veritable forest of bananas in my apartment, until the heat died when I was gone over the course of a few weeks to get married and the cat/banana sitter didn't realize the heat had gone completely. Living in Zone -1 (Fairbanks, Alaska), it got rather cold in the middle of winter in the apartment, and the forest never recovered despite patience hoping that the forest had gone dormant. Now that my wife and I are moving into a more permanent location, we've decided to bring back the banana forest in some form. What I would appreciate would be some advice on two things:
1. What varieties work best in containers in smaller spaces? The apartment we are leaving has cathedral ceilings, so I wasn't too concerned about height last time around. Now, I'll be limited to 8 feet. I was thinking perhaps dwarf cavendish, raja puri, and maybe that dwarf namwah pearl, but would be open to other suggestions. I do have a green thumb, and they will be under good grow lights in the winter to make up for our lack of sunlight, so they need not be the easiest varieties. (The forest that died thrived during the summer I had them with nearly 24 hours of light a day.)
2. Is there a good readily available potting mix for bananas, or should I plan to roll my own again? Last time I used a commercial mix and then added a bunch of perlite and vermiculite to it and they seemed to like it.
Thanks,
David Matz
|