bigdog

Despite watering frequently (every other day), two species are standing out as poor performers in the extreme drought and heat of August (Well, drought has been going on all year) this year. After an unusually cool July for Knoxville, Musa itinerans var. xishuangbannaensis and Musa thomsonii looked fairly decent, with M. itinerans actually looking very robust and healthy. Since the start of August, with temps consistently in the high 90s (Fahrenheit) and no rain here at my house, they have both taken turns for the worse. The M. itinerans var. xishuang actually started dropping outer leaves that were still green, like they just peeled away from the pseudostem. Also, the last three leaves to emerge immediately browned on the edges upon unrolling. It's like the pseudostem is literally falling apart. It still has about 10-11 green leaves, so I'm not worried that it will die (yet), I just thought it was strange. M. thomsonii just hasn't grown much at all since planting, and it started the same behavior as M. itinerans. Both do get full sun until late afternoon, so maybe that hurts them also. Weird though, because Leu Gardens in Orlando has a planting of them, and they apparently do fine (they are in the understory though). Maybe its the sun + heat that is doing them in. We even broke 100F (101F) last Thursday, which is an event for Knoxville. Hasn't happened since 1995 until this year. Nashville, OTOH, has been burning up for 2+ weeks now, hitting 100F or better (106F last thursday!) 13 out of the last 14 days. Ugh!

Taylor

The latest leaf on my Jamaican Red is burnt on some parts of the leaves. I know this doesn't explain anything, but I hope it makes you feel better that it isn't only you!

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Taylor

Update:
23 California Gold fruit expected by Thanksgiving!

STEELVIPER

Maybe its lack of cooling at night in your area? Some musa's will just not do well if they get no night time cooling. Meaning 100's/ 90's during the day and say high 70's-80's at night.

mark

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Fcastro

Frank,

It's been hot like that here too with the heat index as high as 115 , but at least we're not suffering from a drought like you guys are. One thing that might help is something that I've been doing with a bunch of my plants who's butts were getting kicked by the sun and heat. I've been draping shade cloth over them and it's really seemed to help ,it's really easy to build a shade house if your plants are arrayed in an orderly fashion or you can just buy the cloth and cut it to fit the plants individually ,it's not heavy at all so it won't hurt your plants. Here's a link to a site that has very reasonable prices. Good luck.


http://www.cloudtops.com