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View Full Version : mixed planting/cross fertilization?


wildaboutplants
07-04-2016, 02:04 PM
This spring i dug up a lot of pups from various species of Banana plants from my mother's house. She could only remember a couple of the varieties, like raja puri/java/ice cream and dwarf Cavendish.

I planted them all together in my compost pile because i couldn't tell one pup from another.

My question is, will this cause any problems? Will pups that develop be true to breed from the parent plant?

And will it really matter if winters seldom stays warm enough for the tree to bare fruit?

Gabe15
07-31-2016, 10:37 AM
They are not propagated from seed so there is no way they can cross. Any pup that is produced from a given plant is essentially just an underground branch of that plant, and so removing them and replanting is making a clone, there is no cross pollination involved.

The plants can survive without bearing fruit consistently, but it really depends on exactly where you are located. Also, planting more than one banana plant in a compost pile sounds very cramped, they should have at the very least a 6ft spacing from one another to allow them enough space to grow properly.