sean

I have an older stand of bananas which I do not know what type it is. One has recently flowered and so far has 3 hands that are growing. As the flower continues to open, the new hands have been falling off.

Is this normal? Anything I can do to prevent it?

Gabe15

That is normal. Those are the male flowers falling off after the female/bisexual flowers have already formed and begun forming parthenocarpically (without pollination). In wild bananas the male flowers are only present for a few days at most then when the pollen is no longer viable the flowers fall off, in edibles, even though the male flowers are sterile and in most cases no pollen is present, they still do the same thing. In order to get more hands of female flowers you would really need to manage the mat by taking off pups and really feeding them well thru out the season.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

MediaHound

Exactly why does taking off pups encourage more hands of female flowers?

Is it a nutrition issue?

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Gabe15

It focuses the growing on the main plant, when you have lots of pups, the plant has to distribute the nutrients it acquires to all of its shoots, but if you limit the amount of shoots (usually for best fruit you keep 1-full size shoot, 1-3/4 size, 1-1/2 size and one just poking out of the soil), it can give the same amout of nutrients to less shoots so each one gets more. This gives which ever shoot is flowering the most energy and capability to produce more fruit. But this has to be started while it is a pup, as it grows you take off the extra pups and by the time its ready to flower it will be a much stronger plant. Also, for the most and best fruit, you never want to have more then 1 fruitng shoot on each mat.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

MediaHound

Makes perfect sense.
I have two Velutinas in bloom right now.
One has 5 pups, and the bunch is much smaller than the other, which has 0 pups.

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Apologies in advance if I am slow to reply to your PM. I suggest posting in the forums for support if you need something urgent.

bananalover

I have not heard of a musa having no pups when it came to flower. What I am wondering is, after it fruits and you cut the mother plant will the corm then produce pups?