Northern Banana Grower

A life ambition is to bring edible bananas to Ireland, grown in polytunnel or glasshouse.
I am a small scale organic market gardener, and like to think ahead to Ireland's food security when imports are either too expensive or impossible. Melons ripened successfully this year, so if they ripened.... the sky is the limit.
We are trying a growing technique to grow plants with a layer of woodchip inoculated with edible mushrooms which are also beneficial to whatever crops growing beside them. The shade cast by bananas would be beneficial for mushrooms too.
So Ireland's winters are very mild; usually no cooler than -5C, very occasionally -15C. Its the summer heat units that are usually missing, usually around 20-25C for Jun to Aug. But bear in mind these are outside temperatures. In the polytunnel ideally the plants can be left in the ground overwinter and fleeced or strawed if necessary and should also get enough extra heat to ripen fruit.
So it seems I need a plant that starts flowering at 5 or 6" in late spring, from overwintered pseudo stems, and ripens in 3-4 months with minimum heat requirements for ripening. Is this possible with any known cultivars?

I hope the knowledge and variety of banana is waiting for me, Perhaps I just need to do some breeding work...

Thank you all for your shared information, much appreciated

2woodensticks

how about dwarf Orinoco..or even dwarf cav. the Orinoco are fairly cold tolerant..and the Cavendish is a fairly common type you should be able to find where you are??anyway..welcome from florida..keep us informed on progress

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

GreenFin

Welcome to the board, Northern Banana Grower.

What size polytunnels will you be using? How tall, wide, and long?

Regarding variety, your concern about food security makes me think that 'kcal of fruit per square foot of growing space' would be important, so you'll probably be looking for varieties that produce large bunches.

The Cavendish varieties are workhorses in that regard. They're the big yellow bananas you see in grocery stores. Dwarf Cavendish will fruit around 4-6', and the ultra productive Grand Nain (a slightly larger type of Cavendish) will fruit a foot or two taller than that. Cavendishes are pretty cold sensitive, so the winters may slow them down a lot more than some of the hardier varieties, but their bunches can be stunningly large, and their flavor is what most people are most familiar with.

Dwarf Namwah is a bit more cold hardy. Its bunches will tend to be smaller than Cavendish bunches, but they're still big. They'll probably flower around 6-7'. The fruit is petite and generally considered to be tasty.

There's a "Wiki" link in the blue bar near the top of the page that you may find really useful. I had a field day reading through all the banana descriptions there when I first joined the forum.

Glad to have you aboard

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Set out runnin', but I'll take my time; a friend of bananas is a friend of mine.

www.GreenFinGardens.com

Northern Banana Grower

Thanks all for the welcomes and replys. Go on the forums!

120ft long 30ft wide 10ft high polytunnel. Theres a basjoo going in there in the spring, growing lovely in pots at the moment. Strawberries are planted either side, a row of figs down the middle with bananas in the center of the fig row in the warmest part of the tunnel.

The bananas are there to make fruit punnets from the leaves. But I may as well try some edible ones too and can always use the leaf if they don't fruit. I've been looking through the varieties all right I'll need to start with the hardiest and quickest to flower and ripen, that tolerates cool summer conditions. That's what I have to go for when picking out fruit and veg in catalogues here in Ireland.

One that stands out as being a quick ripener is Veinte Cohol, but thats only from what I've looked into so far. How long do grand nan, dwarf cavendish, dwarf orinocho, dwarf namwah take to ripen? It also depends when it flowers too right? I would need flowering to start no later than july in order for them to ripen.. Maybe someone could point my the right direction.

Northern Banana Grower

LOoks like the Veinte Cohol has poor cool weather overwintering, so thats that one out. Theres what looks like a super dwarf cavendish in a garden centre, just says musa, I looked up some of the pictures of it though and it looks right. Its got little pups at only 1.5ft also, Might give it a go.

sunfish

Dwarf Namwah would be better I think

momoese

Dwarf Brazilian is good too. In my garden as hardy as Namwah.

oakshadows

ditto, it took us a while to get a bloom on our d brazilian as the plant was a t/c and quite small at that. it is putting out a nice amount of hands and it will get protection this winter if needed. not sure how long it takes to ripen so will just have to wait with fingers crossed. we have a manzano with fruit and that is our favorite banana since we grew it in key west and had fresh all year long, delicious.
as northern grower asked, is there any way to control when a plant will bloom. we have 5 varities with fruit now but several have only been so for a few weeks and now a raji puri is starting a bloom. we will attempt to protect them with teepees and hope.
good growing.

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"What this country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds."

JERICO

Hey Northern Banana Grower! Glad to see you
made it to the bunch!

You should be able to provide some good experiences for us.

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Sorry, we have no bananas today!

Varieties Growing in Zone 8:
Ice Cream, Raja Puri, Gran Nain, Williams, Cavendish, Mekong giant, Basjoo, Double Mahoi, Ensete Snow, Viente Cohol, Saba, FHIA-3 Sweetheart, Thousand Finger, and one BIG mystery Banana.