View Full Version : raja puri?
auburnfan28
03-30-2012, 05:34 PM
Anyone grow the raja puri banana plant? I had never heard of this kind but a local garden shop has a 3 gallon size plant for 29.98. Is this a good banana to try?
sunfish
03-30-2012, 05:38 PM
Anyone grow the raja puri banana plant? I had never heard of this kind but a local garden shop has a 3 gallon size plant for 29.98. Is this a good banana to try?
Expensive
caliboy1994
03-30-2012, 05:41 PM
I hear that it's a great plant, wind resistant and cold hardy with good fruit. I would buy it if it cost that much and it was a decent size already....but that's just plain expensive. You could probably get that size from a member here for around $10 or $15.
caliboy1994
03-30-2012, 05:42 PM
Musa Rajapuri - Bananas Wiki (http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Rajapuri)
auburnfan28
03-30-2012, 05:45 PM
I didn't know, I thought that was a fairly good price. There 5 gallon basjoos are 60 bucks!! I bought 2 of there 1 gallon basjoos for 12.88 each. I got ripped one time off of ebay, paid 30 bucks for a "mature basjoo plant" . The plant was about as thin as a pencil, tiny corm, and hairlike roots. I will never go that route again.
sunfish
03-30-2012, 05:47 PM
I would go for dwarf namwah before rajapuri
Nicolas Naranja
03-30-2012, 08:43 PM
There are better bananas, but it is wind resistant and cold tolerant. It's also expensive. You could shop around and probably get a better deal.
emegar
03-30-2012, 09:05 PM
I can attest to the toughness of this banana. It was the first I bought, and when I divided and moved it to a different spot in my yard, I tossed part of a corm down the side of our house into my "slow compost" pile. Its not irrigated (but landed next to a cinder block wall with irrigation to the landscaping on the other side) and is in just about full shade, yet it keeps right on growing!
Worm_Farmer
03-31-2012, 08:00 AM
I have it! Honestly I am not that thrilled with my Raja. It seems to be the slowest grower that I have. I do like that it stays small and has fair size bunch. However I personally find that it takes cold damage pretty easy and least year I had it choke on me and I lost my summer nanaers.
I agree Dwarf Namwah is a better choice. However I would never discourage you from growing what you might like. Give them all a try if possible. Some people LOVE the Raja puri fruit.
I also agree $30.00 for a banana that is not very rare is pretty expensive. I have some corm I will be able to ship in about a week or 2. PM me if your interested.
Dangermouse01
03-31-2012, 10:13 AM
I can't comment on the taste of the Raja, not quite yet anyhow :)
But for comparison between the Raja Puri and the Dwarf Namwa, here is a picture of my RJ (from this morning). 6 foot step ladder to the right, you can see the flower stalk coming off on the left.
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/dangermouse2006/banana%20stuff/RajaPuriwithladder.jpg
Here is the DN, also from this morning, same ladder (no flower stalk yet).
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/dangermouse2006/banana%20stuff/DwarfNamwawithladder.jpg
Both were purchased in June of 2011 and planted in the ground around July/August of 2011, and were about the same size plants.
DM
venturabananas
03-31-2012, 11:01 AM
I agree with what everyone else has said. If you are looking for a tough plant that stays nice and short, Rajapuri is a good one. Dwarf Namwah is a little tougher and faster grower in my yard, and so I would choose it if I could only have one of the two. That said, I'd give Rajapuri fruit the edge for flavor, though the ones I've seen locally have always produced very small fruit. Mine just put out a flag leaf for the first time, at about 5' of p-stem.
GreenFin
03-31-2012, 03:19 PM
What does a '3 gallon' size translate to in terms of height and thickness of the p-stem? Are we talking p-stems 3+ feet tall and 4" thick?
In comparison to the commercial sites of our members, it doesn't seem like $30 is expensive for that size (for example, Jarred charges $34 for a Raja Puri corm/pup...plus shipping on top of that), yet many in this thread consider $30 to be expensive for a 3gal plant.
For me, since it costs almost $20 to get even a single 2-inch tall Dwarf Cavendish tc plant (cost of plant + cost of shipping), paying a total of $30 for a huge 3 gallon plant seems like an utterly fantastic deal (like $2 ice cubes in the desert). It's obviously different for folks who live in naner country with plants for sale all over everywhere, though, as the other posters have pointed out.
RAINFOREZT
03-31-2012, 03:34 PM
I can't comment on the taste of the Raja, not quite yet anyhow :)
But for comparison between the Raja Puri and the Dwarf Namwa, here is a picture of my RJ (from this morning). 6 foot step ladder to the right, you can see the flower stalk coming off on the left.
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/dangermouse2006/banana%20stuff/RajaPuriwithladder.jpg
Here is the DN, also from this morning, same ladder (no flower stalk yet).
http://i112.photobucket.com/albums/n200/dangermouse2006/banana%20stuff/DwarfNamwawithladder.jpg
Both were purchased in June of 2011 and planted in the ground around July/August of 2011, and were about the same size plants.
DM
So Dwarf namwa is taller than Rajapuri? Seems like Dwarf namwa is not really dwarf.
venturabananas
03-31-2012, 03:36 PM
For me, since it costs almost $20 to get even a single 2-inch tall Dwarf Cavendish tc plant (cost of plant + cost of shipping), paying a total of $30 for a huge 3 gallon plant seems like an utterly fantastic deal (like $2 ice cubes in the desert). It's obviously different for folks who live in naner country with plants for sale all over everywhere, though, as the other posters have pointed out.
I agree. If you are going to mail order them, it's not a bad price. Even if you go to Home Depot or Lowe's around my house, you'd pay at least $20 for banana plant -- and that's with the wholesale nursery only being 30 miles away. At the local nursery where they actually know ho to take care of plants (as opposed to Home Depot), you'd pay over $30 for a banana in a 5 gallon pot.
On the other hand, once you have some mats going that need to be thinned, often you can't even find someone to give the pups away to and they just end up in the compost pile!
venturabananas
03-31-2012, 03:55 PM
So Dwarf namwa is taller than Rajapuri? Seems like Dwarf namwa is not really dwarf.
Dwarf Namwah is definitely a dwarf, with a maximum height normally around 8' or so, as opposed to tall "Namwah" (Pisang Awak) cultivars that can be 12' or more. The Dwarf Namwah in that photo does look suspiciously slender for it's height, maybe a labeling mix up? Or just a taller and more slender than usual Dwarf Namwah.
harveyc
03-31-2012, 05:43 PM
My Raja puri died this winter. Dwarf Namwah is fine. I won't bother trying again. We got down into the low 20s one night this winter which is colder than most years but I'll just stick with the ones that survived. I had a few die so that makes more room for other things.
Dangermouse01
03-31-2012, 06:23 PM
Dwarf Namwah is definitely a dwarf, with a maximum height normally around 8' or so, as opposed to tall "Namwah" (Pisang Awak) cultivars that can be 12' or more. The Dwarf Namwah in that photo does look suspiciously slender for it's height, maybe a labeling mix up? Or just a taller and more slender than usual Dwarf Namwah.
I think it looks slender because the ladder (and a sucker) are both in front of the main stem. Went and measured it and the DN in the my picture is just over 9' to the top of the pseudo-stem, and it's base is a little over 10" in diameter.
Could be a labeling mix-up, but I stopped at a South Florida banana nursery and picked them out on site with the owner, while on my way back from the Keys last year. Pretty confident they are what they are supposed to be.
DM
GreenFin
03-31-2012, 06:34 PM
I'm growing Raja Puri right beside Dwarf Namwah (at least I hope that's what they are!), and my DN is really outpacing the RP in my conditions (hot wet greenhouse). I got them as tc's 2 months ago when both of their p-stems were about 7" tall and 0.67" thick. Now the DN's p-stem is around 36" tall and 4" thick, whereas the RP's p-stem is only around 28" tall and 2.5" thick.
Those results are gonna be a bit skewed, though, since the DN gets a bit more light and since the RP is right next to the door (the coldest spot in the greenhouse).
GreenFin
03-31-2012, 06:42 PM
On the other hand, once you have some mats going that need to be thinned, often you can't even find someone to give the pups away to and they just end up in the compost pile!
Yeah, I can already see that day coming. Right now I'm desperate for more and more plants, but I'm going to have them coming out my ears in the not-too-distant future.
(pun intended--I'm planting some SDC's and maybe a DC or two outside surrounded by a windbreak of corn)
venturabananas
03-31-2012, 08:18 PM
My Raja puri died this winter. Dwarf Namwah is fine. I won't bother trying again. We got down into the low 20s one night this winter which is colder than most years but I'll just stick with the ones that survived. I had a few die so that makes more room for other things.
Harvey, when you have a chance, please give us an update and the winners and losers over this tough winter.
auburnfan28
03-31-2012, 08:42 PM
@greenfin. It is a fairly large plant. Good thick p-stem. I ll put it to you like this, it wouldn't fit in my widest Honda civic. That's one reason I didn't get it the other day. It seems like a great deal to me.
auburnfan28
03-31-2012, 09:26 PM
Wifes, not widest civic. Haha, that was funny though. I hate autocorrect on a smartphone.
Abnshrek
07-07-2012, 09:02 AM
My Raja Puri is beating my D Orinoco, and just crapped a pup.. :^)
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