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View Full Version : Electrified Bananas!


JoeReal
07-18-2005, 04:58 PM
I'm just kidding. Seriously, I bought some soil heating cables and installed them on an insulated pot. Several literature said that if bananas are heated in the corm, they will survive and bear fruit. So, here's how I installed the soil heating cable:

http://groups.msn.com/BananaVillaImageandDiscussionGroup/davisbananas.msnw

Well, Mahoi is really cold sensitive, so I plugged it in the whole winter and left outside last year. By first sign of frost in early November, the leaves of Mahoi fried out. Then by December the trunk started rotting away. Come January, the whole trunk collapsed down to the ground. So much for the heating! Last May, new pups sprang up from the mother corm. Conclusion: Wasted $$ on heating cable and electricity. The heating cable did work, I check temperature inside of the pot, it was kept near 70 deg F by the built-in thermostat.

MediaHound
07-19-2005, 11:53 PM
Well, at least you can say you tried! :p

JoeReal
07-20-2005, 10:38 AM
I also made heated pot for a cold hardy dwarf orinoco and placed it under the eaves of the roof. This one worked well. The orinoco was able to maintain one of its leaves the entire winter, it stayed green, as well as the trunks and all the pups stayed green. Of course D. Orinoco is cold hardy to start with.

Marc
07-20-2005, 02:15 PM
next winter try wrapping Christmas lights around the stalk to keep it warm. If you can save the stalks leave reform quickly

JoeReal
07-20-2005, 04:04 PM
Tried that, the bananas died out completely. It works only on citruses on their trunks over here. Cold sensitive bananas when potted will die out completely down to the corm and will never come back even if protected with Christmas lights. Christmas lights are not effective for heating the corm. The life of the bananas depend on the life of the corm and not the pseudostems. Soil heating cables work only to preserve the corms of cold sensitive bananas, but not enough to preserve the stem. Perhaps, if we do a combo soil heating cable on the corm and Christmas lights on the stalk, then it might preserve both, and I like your idea combined with what I did, giving a fruiting chance to cold sensitive varieties.

eddiemunozep
11-07-2013, 01:18 AM
Long time ago before I went bananas I had friends in Whittier probably 10a who had solar panels to heat there water for their water heater, they ran the pipes under their banana plants and they had some impressive bananas. Dont know what varieties but They were tall and thick trunked.

eddiemunozep
11-07-2013, 08:49 AM
Long time ago before I went bananas I had friends in Whittier probably 10a who had solar panels to heat there water for their water heater, they ran the pipes under their banana plants and they had some impressive bananas. Dont know what varieties but They were tall and thick trunked.