LRich550

Hi All,

Just joined this group & happy to have found all of you! So I live in the desert and want to try my hand at growing bananas! Am I crazy, or what?!! Why am I doing this? Because my heart & soul are in Hawaii where I have been fortunate enough to spend two weeks each year with my family for the past several years. We all fell in love with the bananas there & hate to leave them behind when we return home! Hence my desire to try to grow my own!

Anyone else in the Tucson or Phoenix area having any luck growing their own? I just planted an Apple and Ladyfinger in the ground - wish me luck! I will post how I planted them, where & why in another post later. Any help and or advice will be greatly appreciated!

Linda

Abnshrek

Hello, Welcome & Good Luck.. :^)

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I'm a Nannerhead :^)

2woodensticks

welcome from florida.. if you go again..bring yourself back a few corms..

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got to love em..{neotropical rattlesnake..cascabell}

Alex

I'm in Tucson too. I've been growing bananas for about 3 years. I've kept all of mine in containers. The biggest problem I've had is that I've lost the plants and fruit to frost and wind. This last frost, I brought the plants closer to the house. Most of the leaves got burned off, but they are growing back now. Hopefully, I'll have an early crop and the bananas will be grown before next winter.

LRich550

Good to know someone else in Tucson is attempting to grow bananas, too. I put my two plants in the ground on the east side of my house where there is also a southern exposure. I have an area under two large mesquite trees with it's own little micro-climate. It's easily 15 maybe 20 degrees cooler under them in the heat of the summer. Of course, I will water the bananas more, mesquites will benefit, too! I planted them near a stucco wall thinking that would help in many ways. Since they are young & not acclimated to the sun yet, I put tomato cages around them & I'm draping burlap over those while I alternate sun & shade until they can handle the sun. A lot of work already!! Hope I get something!! Good luck with your plants, too!

LRich550

Thanks, that's a great idea! I brought back plumeria starts but never even thought about banana corms. When I go again next January, I'll do just that!

hybridpower

I'm in Phoenix, and have no problem getting them to grow, though keeping them alive in the summer is the biggest challenge. Mine have a tendancy to burn (badly, as in to the ground), and I will be covering them with shade cloth this July and August. Mine lost all their leaves durring the frost this year, but are recovering nicely. The other thing I've noticed, is that the second year, anything that survives seems much stronger out here, ,and I'm getting new grow out of corms planted outside that I thought had died last summer, and the pups that grew from the orignial plants don't seem near as sensitive as the original plant did. Good luck.

Illia

Welcome! My best advice is that as long as you're in zone 8a or better, growing the more hardy varieties is the best starter. (Mysore, Praying Hands, Orinoco, Brazilian, Goldfinger, Sweetheart, Namwah, Ice Cream, California Gold, etc) Next, to tackle water issues being in a desert, I'd best recommend either trying and looking into Aquaponics or container growing with the container in a shady area. (The banana will want sun, but covering the container is wise. Keeps moisture in and keeps the soil cooler) Remember - bananas prefer their container be at least 15 gallons. Dwarf varieties help, but still, an adult dwarf likes plenty room. Young bananas are easily grown in 1-10 gallon pots but they need to move up.

LRich550

Thanks for the excellent advice! My plants are doing well & looking healthy, a beautiful new leaf on one plant already! I think they will like the area under the big trees & the filtered sunlight this summer.

Chironex

In Las Vegas, I had all of mine on a drip system and timer. This prevented them from burning. Depending upon the size of the plant and pot, install the proper size emitter to provide just enough water, but not too much. You'll be able to do this very inexpensively. I bought mine at the big orange home center. you can get sufficient lengths of tubing, connectors, emitters and fittings to connect it to your exterior faucet for under $50. (maybe less, I had over 100 bananas in pots all over the back yard) Timers are around $20-30.

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Scot

mnaha

Hi Linda,

We are new to Tucson too.. We are living in an apartment and have a large patio and are attempting to grow some in pots here. I have grown all types of Banana plants all my life. I am from New Orleans where they grow easily and wife is from the Philippines. Right now I have three species . One is called California Gold and one is called Dwarf Cavendish and another is called Florida Seminole. Not sure they are going to do ok but ordered from a place in Florida and they were suppose to be a four inch corm but they sent 3 and 3/4 inches of dirt and a little strand of a root.

I am trying to hard to find other people that live here in Tucson that I might get some healthy corms from but in the meantime I ordered some corms from the dept of agriculture USA and not sure when they will be here but they are suppose to be cold hardy and 9b zone ready also the ones I ordered were suppose to be 9b too. Anyway one thing I can tell you about growing bananas and them doing very well, is water first thing in the morning and also in the late afternoon. Let them soak with a slow stream of water, plants should be covered with straw at the bottoms to keep moisture in them also good drainage also fertilize them about every two weeks with miricale grow and also give them full sunlight.. They are a water plant so they can't be over watered nor have enough sun. Mine have always grown huge and done well so here is hoping that they will here to.

In the meantime too wife is planting everything out of the kitchen in planters from seeds and cuttings.. Onions, garlic, potato, pinto beans ,bell peppers and other stuff. Just collects the seeds and puts them in the grown or the cuttings from the root base like lettuce and celery and it all grows well. I wanted an olive tree but found out they are outlawed here in Pima county because of some stupid rule about the pollen or stains on driveways or something.. just ridiculous reasons. They have the weirdest ugliest desert plants that I am allergic to all over the city but I can't have an awesome olive tree to have my own olives.. Really gets me but all I can do is move and cant do that.. But anyway ,anyone else from Tucson growing bananas would love to chat with you or meet. Anyway have a great evening and so glad to see your post . By the way they do grow well here , I have seen the Botanical Society have them and grow them and also tons of places in Phoenix..So everything should be just right..

LRich550

I hope you have good luck with your bananas (& everything else!) my plants were growing and had a nice start but got up one morning to everything pulled out of the ground and torn apart. I think birds of some sort or ground squirrels had a little feast as these were planted in a walled area! I have recently moved to Hawaii and am growing apple bananas...they grow so quickly here and the plants are beautiful, the bananas are heavenly! There were already some established banana plants on the property when we got here and I have planted more. I'm loving it here!

mnaha

y g

Yeah well I thought about that myself.. maybe should have moved back to New Orleans.... They always grew fantastic there also we could have moved to the Philippines.. don't even have to tell you how they grow there , seems like the place is nothing but Banana trees.. but of course that would have been fantastic since I love bananas but we are in Tucson and I am going to give it a go. Have a great life there in the Islands..... nothing like paradise.. glad you are enjoying it there..

Snarkie

Hi Linda, and welcome aboard the Banana Express!

Yeah, you're probably crazy, which is why you ended up here. This is a forum for crazy people who love bananas. Well, I guess that makes us all bananas...

Anyway, don't worry about being crazy or being called crazy. If it's who you are, then run with it. People called me crazy when I re-introduced the dawn redwood to Appalachia. They called me crazy when I submitted an odd idea for a book. They called me crazy when I first ran for office and even crazier when I thought that all of that political camera time primed me to be an actor on a TV show.

Craziness prevailed. Thank God. I am now a crazy actor, writer and politician, who also happens to be the world's leading authority on the critically-endangered dawn redwood. Run with it, Babe.

NEVER be concerned with what others think. Be yourself. There is always another nut out there just as crazy as you are. Years later, you will find out that you are not crazy anyway.

The correct term is "eccentric." We are all eccentric; some of us more so than others.

On that note, welcome aboard the Eccentric Express
It's like, a nanner trippin' crazy ass eccentric dude sayin' it's far out.

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Doug (D.A. Hänks) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2955582/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1


The Only Eastern Redwood Forest in America




"Nuke my 'nanners, will you?!"

Jose263

M - check out the original message it is very ooold - I'm guessing that member is long gone - but good luck finding another arizonian nana head

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Growing: Orinoco, Rajapuri, Dwarf Cav, SDC, TT, Dwarf Red, Dwarf Namwah, Tall Namwah (aka Ice Cream), Dwarf Brazilian, Veinte Cohol, California Gold, Double Mohai, NOT-Goldfinger, Gran Nain, Velutina

Snarkie

Dude, she replied earlier today.

She is obviously still alive and well, and still posting on this forum.

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Doug (D.A. Hänks) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2955582/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1


The Only Eastern Redwood Forest in America




"Nuke my 'nanners, will you?!"