Pancrazio
11-23-2012, 07:20 PM
Hi everyone!
Long time lurker, first time poster.
As many of you, on this forum, i'm hoping to grow bananas in a less than ideal climate.
You can see that i live in central Italy, wich itself isn't the classical place for bananas.
Our climate is pretty different from the USA; summers are decent but are limited to 3 months, in wich we have true tropical climate (on the dry side).
Spring and autumn vary a lot; you can safetly assume that reliabe growt can't start before middle april (for the most cold tolerant bananas), and stops somewhere during october (a bit later for nanas with a lot of B in them). So, we have about 6 months, on a good year, of growt (things go better in southern italy, where people can grow cavendish effortlessy, but unluckily this isn't my case).
Anyway, winters are the hard part, and the most hard to describe.
They are usually cold and damp. The average minimum temperature of my city during winter is 1C (34F) and the average max is 10C (50F). This is the same average temperature you find in Atlanta (USDA zone 7a-b).
However, unless i get exceptionally unlucky, lowest minimum temperature aren't as bad. You know, around here is filled with olive trees, and we have some citrus in gardens (i have a lemon on the south side of my house wich i cover every year with some frost cloth, and it survived last 20 years). We can expect -5 (23F) every year, for a single night, on bad years even lower, and in catastrophic years -10 (14F).
Now, i'm hoping to get some plant in ground growing, in a sheltered location (but possibly without using a shelter), and having it to grow a bunch.
I'm not hoping to harvest bananas on regular basis, but if we get a coulpe of mild winters, i hope to get a bunch.
Is that doable? It's pretty hard to find a USA climate comparable to mine (i searched a lot but i don't seem to find a place with similiar average temperatures and minimum temperatures) but i know that people here come from all around the world and maybe someone has done something similiar.
However coming to the real question:
During this years i have searched around and made some effort to see if there is a way to reach my goal. I tried the dig up method (with "dwarf namwah", "rajapuri" and "comune di sicilia") but i'm not completly satisfied. Since i wanted to try to overwinter the bananas in ground,i made this list of cultivars wich may prove useful for my project, and should be pretty cold hardy: i'd love to hear comments from you on them.
Expecially i'd love to know how long takes their bunch to mature, since i can't afford bunches that need more than 5 months, don't matter how much cold hardy they may be. The cultivars are:
Helen's hybrid
Chini Champa
Malbhog
Cardaba
Pahari Kela
Saba
I hope they aren't a collection of broken dreams! :D
I should be able to find all of them pretty easily, with the exception of Pahari Kela, wich i'd love to buy, if someone can give me a reliable source.
I'll buy them on next spring, but since i like to organize thing well in advance, i'm asking now. :)
Thanks to everyone contributing!
Long time lurker, first time poster.
As many of you, on this forum, i'm hoping to grow bananas in a less than ideal climate.
You can see that i live in central Italy, wich itself isn't the classical place for bananas.
Our climate is pretty different from the USA; summers are decent but are limited to 3 months, in wich we have true tropical climate (on the dry side).
Spring and autumn vary a lot; you can safetly assume that reliabe growt can't start before middle april (for the most cold tolerant bananas), and stops somewhere during october (a bit later for nanas with a lot of B in them). So, we have about 6 months, on a good year, of growt (things go better in southern italy, where people can grow cavendish effortlessy, but unluckily this isn't my case).
Anyway, winters are the hard part, and the most hard to describe.
They are usually cold and damp. The average minimum temperature of my city during winter is 1C (34F) and the average max is 10C (50F). This is the same average temperature you find in Atlanta (USDA zone 7a-b).
However, unless i get exceptionally unlucky, lowest minimum temperature aren't as bad. You know, around here is filled with olive trees, and we have some citrus in gardens (i have a lemon on the south side of my house wich i cover every year with some frost cloth, and it survived last 20 years). We can expect -5 (23F) every year, for a single night, on bad years even lower, and in catastrophic years -10 (14F).
Now, i'm hoping to get some plant in ground growing, in a sheltered location (but possibly without using a shelter), and having it to grow a bunch.
I'm not hoping to harvest bananas on regular basis, but if we get a coulpe of mild winters, i hope to get a bunch.
Is that doable? It's pretty hard to find a USA climate comparable to mine (i searched a lot but i don't seem to find a place with similiar average temperatures and minimum temperatures) but i know that people here come from all around the world and maybe someone has done something similiar.
However coming to the real question:
During this years i have searched around and made some effort to see if there is a way to reach my goal. I tried the dig up method (with "dwarf namwah", "rajapuri" and "comune di sicilia") but i'm not completly satisfied. Since i wanted to try to overwinter the bananas in ground,i made this list of cultivars wich may prove useful for my project, and should be pretty cold hardy: i'd love to hear comments from you on them.
Expecially i'd love to know how long takes their bunch to mature, since i can't afford bunches that need more than 5 months, don't matter how much cold hardy they may be. The cultivars are:
Helen's hybrid
Chini Champa
Malbhog
Cardaba
Pahari Kela
Saba
I hope they aren't a collection of broken dreams! :D
I should be able to find all of them pretty easily, with the exception of Pahari Kela, wich i'd love to buy, if someone can give me a reliable source.
I'll buy them on next spring, but since i like to organize thing well in advance, i'm asking now. :)
Thanks to everyone contributing!