Bananas_are_awesome

....and I don`t find a sitemap anywhere?

How can I see all the different boards so that I can put questions into the right board?

To find this board I had to go to "new posts" and since there were other newcomers I was shown their new post and also this board.
But is there no list of boards anywhere?


Short introduction:
I live in northern italy, my bananas grow outdoors in the ground in USDA Zone 8. They were sold to me as Musa basjoo but they are my first and only bananas and I cannot tell species or varieties.

I have had this banana patch for 4 years now and learned a lot about bananas from observation.

They are greedy for once, they suck the soil dry for nutrients and water and nothing else grows under bananas, not even weed. I have tried different underplantings since it is the ugly bare stems and sucked dry soil that I look at when I stand up close- but bananas outconquer everything else.

I also learned that bananas are awesome mulch material, there is so much of it and the stuff decays quickly. However, I am stuck with hand-shredding if I want it small enough to use around other, smaller plants. And that is work to go crazy off, I wish some ingenious engineer would build a banana shredder that delivers small pieces but no porridge- and collects the juice. Alas nope.

my feeding plan for 4 years consisted of horn shavings and mulch and a tiny bit of mineral fertiliser to snack on immediately in spring, before the horn shavings become available. I learned that you cannot overfeed bananas- I certainly never managed to do so. I can throw very much of the hornshavings and they just get happier and happier without any discoloration or other signs of too much N.

Last year I put a 15cm-20 layer of home-made compost on top of it all and after only a week that compost layer was full of banana roots, no more crumbly compost on top. More a root carpet.



Awesome stuff, bananas.

edwmax

Welcome to the Bunch.



... If you click on the Bananas.org banner or type it into the URL, you will go to the front page. Scroll down to see all the Boards and links.


Bananas are a tropical plants that needs 100 plus inches of water per year. It's shade and dead fall will keep weeds away under & around the mat.

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Bananas_are_awesome

I think I found the main page!!!
Thank you!

Yes, bananas are not nice to have as neighbours if you are a plant.
But I am not giving up just yet to find a nice underplanting. I have still several ideas to try.

Most years I cut them down to the ground in spring because of frost damage, then I have banana pulp because the frozen water expanded and destroyed the cells.
And then there is light, but also very hungry new young bananas that seem to suck all nutrients and water from the soil to satisfy they increasing needs.
For an underplanting this causes problems. First there is light and nutrients and water- and then, uhm, not.

I have not yet tried spring bulbs, but my theory is that they would profit from this point in time with light and nutrients available- and then go dormant anyway until next spring. But they would at least offer valuable flowers for pollinators for a short time.

There is also this Aster that I heard great badass survival skills about- which I haven`t met personally yet: Aster divaricatus. The badass survival skills it is said to bring to the table is spreading by runners, tolerating shade, tolerating dry soil and also wetter soil and not needing much nutrients. I have hopes. It would then once again offer pollinators valuable flowers and that in a season when there is little else around: late summer.

I would have to try, but 2020 is not the year for underplanting experiments- apparently. All my favourite pant sellers don`t ship.

And I have to sing some praise for Tradescantia `Concorde grape`which now is in the fourth year of cohabitation with bananas. Admittedly as the border plant closest to light. Admittedly it gets totally weakened and outconquered later in summer and goes almost dormant. But it is back every spring and offers flowers that pollinators love. I found the Tradescantia sending seedling-scouts to search for better grounds and I let them selfseed- I respect for that endurance.
And a tiny self-seeded Camellia survives, too. Which is weird because Camellias don`t like what bananas like and I pamper the bananas.


And I have another idea for cohabitation that may or may not be obvious to fail. But it is not obvious to me. Cause I am new to roses.
Right beside my bananas I have a tiny ugly tool-hut that leans on the house wall. And I keep having these day dreams of a scented climbing rose going up over the roof of the shed and onto the housewall.

And I figured... The one time I really dug to remove a banana totally, what I found were a lot of roots but not very deep. It was very much work, but nothing went really deep. no pole root or anything.
Roses however do the pole root thing, they go deep if they can at all.
So what if I get a huge pot, cut off the bottom and am left with a tube element. Place into soil so that banana roots stay away from rose. Rose should want to go down anyway and down there is no obstacle.
And the shade from banana should make the climbing rose do what it is actually supposed to do: Grow up and into the light- where I then would bind it to the toolhut-roof, into full sun and away from bananas.

It might just work.
I am new to roses, my soil isn`t that great for roses and so far I didn`t feel like fussing over roses. But now I need to expand and start using vertical spaces, my garden is tiny and full. And rose scent is a very persuasive factor, and happy pollinators, too...

worth a try?


If anyone here has successfully underplanted bananas with anything that is green and covering the bare stems and preferably making flowers for pollinators I would be very interested to hear your experiences.

pjkfarm

Wow! Love your writing! Great idea for the rose (no idea if it would work), but a another plant would be the clematis, roots love it cool and it climbs over everything with masses of flowers for a long time. the montana (sp?) with small white flowers gets huge and covered solid with flowers. the other varieties with much larger flowers, if happy also become covered (ours right now are pretty amazing).
And I love the idea of the spring bulbs - we will be dividing a lot in the next couple ofw weeks and will try a bunch under our basjoo and also colocasia - which we had not thought of before. We use liriope and vinca minor under the colocasia (esculenta) to have it look nice when no leaves. Colocasia does not seem to be as hungry as the basjoo. We might try some liriope and vinc under some of our basjoo as well - never thought of it. (we have maybe 20 clumps)