Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Hi folks, I have been a lurker here for years, thought I would jump in with some details on how I recently killed my gorgeous 18 month old A'ea'e - and to ask if anyone knows of any available now, that they can ship to me. (zip 87544, NM USA)

I'm also looking for other variegated bananas - other than Florida which I already have in my collection.

I have around 50 potted banana's, about 20 types in my greenhouses, in the Southern Rocky Mountains, near the Colorado/NM border - at 8000 feet, not exactly tropical island conditions.......I live off grid with solar power, satellite internet with limited bandwidth which is why I haven't posted before, but my passion for growing bananas has grown over the years! I'm in the process of culling out around 300 Fig trees in my main Greenhouse and replacing with more bananas!

I killed my beloved, gorgeous, showpiece of my entire collection, my 12 foot high, 18 month old A'ea'e this past winter, and in case any of you out there, have too many A'ea'e's and are looking to thin them out, here are some simple, easy to follow recommendations! ;)

1) When drilling all the extra holes for plenty of drainage in the whiskey barrel, make sure and use a small enough drill bit to where they can all get clogged up. Make sure the pot sits tight against the ground to help prevent drainage.

2) As the main growing season winds down, get really cocky about how easy growing this A'ae'e seems to be the last year and a half. No different than any other musa!!? Continue to water and fertilize heavily as you go into winter, with a lot of less light, and warmth for all your bananas. Pat yourself on your back, you are such a musa banana expert now with your towering A'ea'e........

3) When all of a sudden, on Jan 1, the dead of winter, your gorgeous A'ea'e starts losing leaves, instead of yanking her out of the pot right then and and there like you know you should do, let her sit there for the next three months, slowly going down-hill, rotting away, and a couple weeks ago finally realize she was a goner, pull 'er out, finding some moist muck on the bottom few inches of the pot - the holes were completely clogged up. The top 16" or so of the pot were fairly dry, which had totally tricked me. A HUGE, STUPID, IDIOTIC error for me, who although not a musa expert as many on here - by any means, I am an experienced hobbyist with over 30 years of growing bananas, such a bone-headed, expensive, rookie mistake........OUCH!

So now, I have some feelers out, and am searching high and low for a replacement A'ea'e......maybe even a few of them, as I think I have learned my lesson. If I ever kill another A'ea'e, it will be by UNDER-WATERING, and TOO MUCH DRAINAGE!!! This was by far my favorite plant, out of hundreds I have...I hope to have a few replacements in my collection soon....rest in peace my dear A'ea'e friend........

Pic below of how she looked last August. (I hope this pic loads, I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to post pics here!!!!)

Anyway, nice to post here finally!

Amado
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Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Stunning plant. Beautiful.

Bill

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Glad you decided to post. That plant is perfectly grown. No real burned spots on the leaves. I thought you would have bright light at that elevation. How do you protect the leaves from burn? Your overwater mistake is one most have made. Keep an eye out in the for sale section here. I think PR-Giants is selling Florida variegated corms right now but not sure of A'ea'e.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Hi, my main banana greenhouse is glazed with a 5 ply polycarbonate. It provides a soft diffused light. I have another greenhouse attached to the front of my passive solar home, that indeed is glazed with glass, so have to be careful, no variegated bananas in there!

Here is another pic of her, this past November, shortly before her spiral down began. She was around 12' feet at this point, and had been a textbook of perfection.......until........
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Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Holy Cow! That is one Beauty!

I'm so sorry for your loss.

Truly was a magnificent plant.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

By the time I cut all the rot off the original entire corm, I was left with two little pieces of corm/nubs of pups starting, and a precious few white roots. Now if these were cavendish type corms, I would give them a decent chance, but being A'ea'e, I have about as much of a chance of them growing as I do of winning the mega-millions lottery, but as Jim Carrey says, YOU ARE SAYING I HAVE A CHANCE, RIGHT? woo hoo! ;)

It took me around TWENTY years to convince myself that life is short, and COUGH UP for an A'ea'e, and I have been in a darn funk the last few months every time I look at her empty whiskey barrel!! I sure hope I can find a replacement soon, and try again! yay! :0517:
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Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

If my eyes do not deceive me that piece of the corm closest to your palm can be sprouted. Treat it with fungicide and plant in perlite or coarse sand. Do not keep it wet. Just barely moist and err towards dry. If you do not have fungicide then use cinnamon spice but for such a valuable plant and because it would ease your pain to save it I would get fungicide.
Also you seem to know how to grow a great AeAe but I would look up PR-Giants posts, here, to brush up on sprouting small starts like you have. He seems to have that perfected.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Thank you so much for your advice - I'm in no way any sort of musa expert, but am an experienced hobbyist, and have sprouted many corms like this the over the years - BUT, this is an A'ea'e!! ;)

While A'ea'e, may be more tricky, here is the OTHER side of the equation.

I have a lot of unknown (probably dwarf Cavendish) pups all over the place, from mother plants I got long before the internet. I have thrown literally hundreds of pups onto my compost pile over the years, as there isn't too much of a market for dwarf banana pups in the Rockies..... ;)

I had one come up in an old planter bed of mine, where I needed the space for other stuff, so I chopped the mama plant down last summer, and dug down deep to get all traces of the corm out. And THEN in mid winter, A NEW PUP SHOWED UP!!! So once again, I dug down about a foot, removing ALL TRACES of this darn pup. And yup, a few days ago, she sent up ANOTHER pup, this time, I dug down 2 feet, and I think I got all of her this time.

Another story - when throwing some pups away I didn't need, I put the soil from the pots, into my main potting mix area, and potted up some young Fig Trees. This was 2 years ago. I had sifted the new soil into the fig I THOUGHT very carefully. Yet somehow, some tiny corm got by me, and A YEAR later, she sprouted out of the potted Fig - surprising the heck out of me. I dug her and and decided to keep this one, she is currently about 6' tall, and doin' great!

Ahhh....if only A'ea'e's, love, and life were this simple........

;)

Amado

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Interesting thread, thanks for posting.

What you're trying to do is fairly simple and I've been giving away a'ea'e cuttings like that for years. I've only had one client that was unsuccessful and that was because she thought it was too difficult. Instead of trying to grow them she gave the cuttings to some of her friends and they were successful.

How much time elapsed between cutting off all the rot and taking the photo?

Photos of your first inspection will be helpful. I recommend growers that have a proven methodology to inspect at 4 days just to be sure everything is going as planned. Others should do it between 7 and 10 days because this gives plenty of time to prove either success or failure. If it appears to be a failure this gives the grower the opportunity to make adjustments and limits any further damage to only the 7 to 10 days.

Here's some pics of a Florida I recently separated and the inspection was 4 days later.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Hi, the photo was the initial day, about 3 weeks ago, that I pulled the mother plant out, and after trimming that was what I was left with - between walnut and golfball size. Unfortunately, one just shriveled away, and is adios, I re-trimmed the remaining little chunk - that was a pup forming - and it still has white, but no roots.
I have had them lightly planted, about halfway under a mix that has worked for me in the past, a locally available fast draining coir/perlite/pumice mix. I am debating taking the remaining chunk and switching to 100% perlite. I know, keeping them both aerated, and some moisture is crucial, along with warmth.

I had a much more detailed post, with pictures here, but I had a combination of the site crashing AND my older PC crashing! yikes! But above is heart of the issue! ;)

If you have any sort of "long shot drastic measures" that might increase my slim odds of this one remaining chunk coming back to life, much appreciated!!

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

I don't look at it as if I perfected something, all I did was eliminate the obvious mistakes. Once a grower eliminates the obvious mistakes then the small starts become easier to grow then the large starts because they respond more quickly to proper conditions.

I've posted thousands of photos over the past dozen years showing members how to properly grow small vegetative nubs but now I'm thinking it might have been better to show how not to grow small vegetative nubs.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Many things, someone like me, an experienced hobbyist, but by no means a musa expert as yourself do, do indeed, work, but this does not mean they are the best, or even "right"......I fully realize that.

In the past 30 years, I have done most everything "wrong" with my dwarf cavendish types, and still had grand success. And for the first year and a half, my first A'ea'e did great - leading me to get complacent, for sure. Did I learn my lesson? Hopefully.

This site is absolutely great for info - but can get overwhelming to search for something. If anyone has exact direct links to a way to root small vegetative chunks of A'ea'e, I sure would appreciate it. And if I have success, and indeed bring this chunk back to life, and in a few years have hundreds of A'ae'e pups, that cause me back pain from removing all these said pups, I promise not to send you my doctor bills. and to offer a 5% discount on all A'ea'e pup sales of over a dozen at a time. ;)

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

This is an important question and should be the starting point, so I'll rephrase it.

How many minutes elapsed between cutting off all the rot and taking the photo?

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Hi, I would say, a minute or two - I took the entire large rotting corm out to a stream on my property, rinsed and slowly and carefully trimmed all the brown rotting stuff away, and took the pic.

The reasons the mama plant that had fooled me, leading me to wait so long to pull the entire corm out - were two things. The top 16" or so of potting mix were nearly dry, it was the BOTTOM 6
inches of the whiskey barrel that was retaining moisture. Second, the darn stem looked very green and fine during the entire time the leafs went downhill, starting Jan 1.

I should have realized, after looking and growing great for 18 months, and started going south on me, it was rotting. Since this was my first A'ea'e, I wrongly assumed it was just going through a winter slowdown.

Anyhow, I know by today, 25 days since the day I pulled and trimmed the rotted corm, my chances have dwindled..

However, here are some of pics of TODAY, of this tiny chunk, with my trusty nursery assistant, STILL showing white when scraped and cleaned. It is sitting here on my desk next to my PC, waiting your advice!!! I shall hear and obey!!! I have also included a picture of three things I have here on hand to work with. 1) Perlite 2) A course-ish (?) sand, and the coir/perlite/granite/rice hull mix.

For all your help, if I ever convince you to send me some variegated corms to the mountains of the southern Rockies, you can add on a healthy surcharge. ;)

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Thank-you.

The reason time is important is because exposed tissue oxidizes and the tissue color changes during the process. The color is an efficient way of determining healthy tissue from unhealthy tissue, also the color of fibers within the tissue seems to be a better indicator. It's kind of like the blue and red fibers you'll see in US paper currency except in banana tissue they're brown or white.

First, it's clear in your photo the tissue is unhealthy and will definitely die and worse the rot can potentially spread to your nub.

Here's what the inside of a healthy a'ea'e looks like.




Second, the unhealthy tissue in your photo is the cortex of the mother plant and does not help the nub in any way so it should have been removed regardless of it's health because it will die.

Third, same with the roots for the same reasons. Sometimes this can be confusing if some of the roots of the mother plant are exiting through the cortex of the nub but upon close observation it should be apparent which are which.

All unhealthy nub tissue should be removed.

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Thank you so much, after spending several hours searching and re-reading posts here, I am trimming the tiny chunk to where all brown is gone, and planting in slightly moistened perlite.
I realize this just a probable fools errand at this point, but since there is still "some" white, might as well try! woo hoo!

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Is there a growing point on the chunk of tissue in your photo or is it just a piece of cortex from the mother plant?

Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

First off, allow me to really express my thanks, PR-Giants, for taking the time respond too my questions. I truly appreciate it.

There indeed is a growing point. It was a pup starting on the rotted corm. Here is another pic of what the growing point looked like today, and also a pic of where I have it now, potted up in some perlite (switched out from the original coir mix it did nothing in). I have several corms I'm working with now of some different types. I have to keep them next to my wood stove at night, (keeping them around 75 degrees fahrenheit), and they go into my main musa greenhouse during the day, into with no full sun, just some filtered light, and around 85 degrees.
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Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

Here's the mama plant, last July, at around 8' high. She was the stunningly gorgeous showpiece of all my musa.
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Re: Growing Bananas at 8000 feet/searching for A'ea'e
 

This is a great site filled with many helpful members.

Perlite is an interesting choice for substrate and I'm sure there are members here with much more experience with perlite than me. I've found perlite to have great aeration qualities but lousy for moisture retention and never spent much time working with it.

I've been working with clean sand since the 1960's and even though aeration qualities are poor with fine grains it improves as grain size is increased, while moisture retention is high with fine grains it's reduce as grain size is increased. So once I found a grain size that fit my growing style it made it easy to work with even smaller cuttings.