obdiah

for the last two years I have been working on fruiting bananas in zone 7 north Carolina with varying success my experiments with single plant earth sheltered
greenhouses met with more success than expected and kept several plants alive and green over winter in spite of several days of temperatures in the single digit range and flooding problems since fixed and have since built 1 more for this winter also finished a 12 x 20 earth shelter green house now my thoughts on
velutinas 1 contrary to popular belief the are edible in spite of the seeds I at my first ones this year and found the taste pleasant they are full of seeds but
if not saving the seeds I just eat seeds and all
2 they are very short cycle from seedling to fruit in around 20 weeks i have some that have fruited and their first pup has fruit on it they have 12 to 18
bananas per plant not a lot but still OK
as to seeds I eat lots of seeded fruit grapes persimmons tomatoes and blackberries thinking about pulping some though a colander and making banana bread of a naner pudding
3 crop friendly should be simple to plant a half acre or so in spring and have a huge crop of them

any way thats my thoughts on pink bananas
also have dwarf ronoco and blue java that I hope to fruit next season my basjo is blooming now cool but the things taste like sour cuccumbers

geissene

eating the seeds ? Sounds painful, maybe I'll try next year if my velutina flowers. I wonder if mashing the fruit to strain out the seeds is possible... Then you have smoothie pulp!

Congrats on getting basjoo and velutina to fruit, good to know basjoo taste horrible so I won't have to try it.

I was curious to know more about your single plant earth shelters? Got any pics?


Erik

obdiah

banana smoothie sounds good there's some pictures of the pit greenhouse on an old post on this site but I will try to post some of the new pit its some what improved banana sphere pit greenhouse

geissene

I remember that post! As I recall you used a ladder to get into the pit.

I was considering making a single plant structure by digging in my garden. I don't use the space over winter. Perhaps adding a PVC pipe for watering would eliminate the need to remove the top cover, since its only one plant. For me, its easy to dig down about 2', but it might take me some work to get 3' down.....

obdiah

New idea on what to do with velutinas fruit make wine! Lots of web info on banana wine pictures are really beautiful golden yellow color I wonder if velutinas would make pink wine if you used peellings and all