Ground Vs container
 

I have several bananas in the ground and in containers. I recently have had problems with my container plants. It started with one plant and now I have it on 3 plants. The outer edge of the mature leaves turn crispy. Its about 3/4 of a inch all the way around the mature leaves. I dont have this problem with the in-ground plants. Any ideas??? Am I over / under watering the containers ??? I live in central CA zone 9b and the weather has been in the low 90's. Ive grown container plants for 3 years with no problems and now this

Re: Ground Vs container
 

I have noticed the same thing with my potted bananas. There are a few possibilities I can think of. Recently I switched fertilizers and that has helped quite a bit. I struggled for over a year to figure out that Wellspring Banana Fuel is severely lacking something. Started using Classicote 16-9-23 (4 month time release), a very similar ratio to BF and my plants started growing like CRAZY. I did a few experiments on plants by hitting them with a double dose of BF and it helped, when a friend gave me a little Classicote it quickly became obvious the WBF was no good. Another thing could be salt buildup, potted plants really need to be flushed once in a while. Make sure that all the soil in the pot gets soaked, sometimes dry pockets can develop in pots and no amount of watering can penetrate these areas. You need to set the pot in a shallow pan or create a trough with some heavy plastic under the pot and cover the drain holes with water in the trough and gently flood the top of the pot over and over, if you see bubbles coming up from the container for a minute or more you probably had dry pockets in there. Once you are sure the soil is totally soaked then run the flushing water through it. RO or rain water is the best for flushing, if you can at the very least use RO/rain water for a final flush after the tap water. It is almost impossible to get enough rain to flush a container properly, if you can get some buckets of rain water and pour it on. Use at least a mild dose of fert in the final flush, more if the plant is growing vigorously. I believe containers benefit from steady mild doses of fertilizer, keep an extra plant around that you can experiment with (abuse) when trying to solve these problems. My plants in the ground grow so much better that I may give up on pots if this new fertilizer doesn't stop the choking of my potted nanners. Make sure the sun does not hit the sides of your containers, I have half a house worth of plywood cut in small squares shading my pots. It looks goofy but it works.

Re: Ground Vs container
 

You know how wet your pots are better than me, but it sounds like you either aren't feeding them enough OR you aren't giving them enough water to take up the nutes they need. I find that in the heat of summer, its nearly impossible to over water bananas in pots. I recently had family and friends watering my plants during the week while I was away in the city for work. With the instruction of watering my large potted bananas 10L every other day, they showed sign of underwatering and K deficiency.

Re: Ground Vs container
 

As dry as it has been out there I'd keep the pots close together so the leaves can keep the pots from over-heating.. I had a mister on mine last year did very well..

Re: Ground Vs container
 

Well I took a big Rubbermaid tub and put 6" of water in it. placed each container in the tub and watered them. They bubbled, burped,& farted like crazy. I let them soak for 10 min and watered them again before removing them from the tub. I hope this works. Im going to go get some iron sulfate today

Re: Ground Vs container
 

Were you getting bubbles from the drain holes too?

Re: Ground Vs container
 

I don't think so, but it was dark. Most of my gardening time is at night. LOL