Mishra

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

beam2050, pjkfarm, subsonicdrone