Advice for winter bananas delayed transplantation
 

I am planting bananas in 4 acres in Lucknow in North India for commercial purpose and need some advice.

I plant Tissue Culture Grand Naine bananas, the right time to plant here is July with the onset of rainy season ; which is after a spell of summers (110F/45C). This variety in other parts of the country takes 12 months but my city has a cold spell with temperatures falling to 46 F / 8C and soil temperature would perhaps go to 35F/2C in the months of late December and until end January so it itaks 14 months and we lose 2 months and prices fall to half.

By December, the plant is 5 months old and roughly 3 feet tall (Its max height will be 7 feet) , and then post December plant goes into hibernation and attacks of Sigatoka and other fungal attacks. When the weather gets warmer, the plants are already in cold shock and take a month to recover.

I was considering if I plant the saplings close in soil with a gap of 1.5 feet between planys (in open fields it is 5 feet) , and when it gets cold cover this into a polyhouse all the way from December to January protected from frost and perhaps heated (I dont know how) and perhaps made to photosynthesize using LED lights.

i.e. after 6 months plant are take to open fields in February when it starts to get a little warmer. Does this look logical? or will the plants growth suffer not being in the open fields? or face a setback of few days due to transplantation - uprooting and rerooting? how many days would this hit be?

My goal is to reduce the time to harvest from 14-months today to the plants ideal duration of 12 months or say 13 months. We seem to lose 2 months due to the freeze and subsequent recovery. will the transplanting pull the plant back by few months? and the longer duration in compact phase, a bad idea. Please help.

Here is a video of the farm from early December before the chill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1bIVInh8n8

Re: Advice for winter bananas
 

Interesting project.

Your idea sounds similar to how strawberries and other small vegetable crops are grown in some areas in the US using what is referred to as "plasti-culture". Its a combination of plastic sheets covering the soil (below soil root warmth), fertigation (water and nutrition), and possibly low poly-tunnels (above soil leaf and stem warmth/protection).

You don't have a risk that plants will die so its more of solution of getting an earlier crop and better prices. This is exactly why the plastic culture/fertigation thing came along.

If incremental revenue is greater than incremental costs than why not try it but that's a calculation that you will need to make based on your local input costs, resources, and revenue opportunities.

Let us know what you do and how it turns out. Very interesting.

Good luck!

Re: Advice for winter bananas
 

Thanks !! I wasn't aware this was used as a practice for strawberries, thats interesting. My curiosity is that this means keeping the plant in protected environment for 50% of its life span , yes I will try this with a small set of plants this year and share feedback.

On a side note I do visit US often for work, and have been very keen to see some farms in the US. But I visit the West Coast SFO region most of the time.

Re: Advice for winter bananas
 

http://www.bananas.org/f2/my-semi-pi...use-18518.html
check out forum member greenfin's thread

also search citrus in the snow

and walapini

maybe for just a small population in case of deep freeze

if you get fruit outdoors already this would be a lot of money and construction
maybe not worth it for the whole plantation

but i am not an expert... just putting it out there

Re: Advice for winter bananas
 

Thanks I checked in detail both the thread and links on citrus in snow, very interesting and new information. Thanks a lot for sharing. Yes will test with a small number of plants.