Zeebie

Hey Boys and Girls,

I trying to look into tissue propagation and i stumbled onto the forum, so i am kinda new here.

Little bit of history about my plant and location.

Well, i live in the one of the lower states, Victoria in Australia. Out side of the topical northern states banana plants do not seem to grow very well as it is a bit cold and can get quite frosty. I've spoken to a few other people who grow banana plants in my state but due to the cold they do not fruit.

My grandmother, 33 years ago was in Queensland and on the side of the road there was banana plant and she dug it up and transplanted it at home where it has been since (you cannot do this anymore, not only is it illegal now, they are also no longer found on the road sides).

After 33 years she has developed quite a large personal crop of thriving banana plants (close to 100 plants), Along the back edge of the crop she runs a very high tin fence and shed, this seems to reflect all the sun into the soil and very surprisingly they are able to fruit and bare bananas each year.

Anyway due to the size of her crop she now proactively digs out the suckers and turns them into compost for her other plants.

My grandmother and i while living in different towns both share a dark red mineral rich soil, but after a few feet it turns to a hard clay, i think that also may have some bearing on her success.

I was stopping by my grandmothers house one day as she had just recently gotten out the hospital from breaking her hip and i was lucky enough to be there before she started digging the suckers up for composting and i was able to dig up my own sucker and transplant it into a pot at home, The situtation helped us both, she got free labour and i got a plant.

It was roughly 12inches and had a single root, i thought it was going to die several months ago but now its edging onto about a meter high. I am rather impressed with the growth of the plant as i transplanted it during the middle of winter, which I've recently found out is a no no.

My banana plant is currently planted into a extremely large plastic garden pot, that seems to keep all the warmth in the soil, at the moment i move the pot around to either on my deck or next to the house pillar depending on how bad the wind. I make sure it is well looked after.

The breed of banana plant is Australian Lady Finger ( Musa Acuminata )
I think most people who grow bananas grow the dwarf varieties for indoor use, however these are not dwarfs and the plant itself will grow upto 25ft/7meters tall, i just don't know how long it will take before it matures to that height.

Recently i was able to pick up a few more suckers, two of them are doing well, and one not so well, I am hoping that one day my plants will grow and clone into something similar as to my grandmothers patch.

Ill upload some images of growth shortly. My phone is not connecting well to this laptop, ill be jumping onto the desktop to do it.

*edit* Hmm, appears image shack does not allow uploading without a paid account these days. Using Dropbox give links to the page the image is on but not a direct link.. rather annoying, but anyway.

Photo taken in Nov 2014
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/dmtsmkr27vrpqr3/AAD8ulzCCacnX2JExPfxylbaa

Photo taken 22 Dec 2014
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/g5g98x9rc...DMz2WrT87bJJoa

Photo taken 4th Jan 2015
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/agrd4np6e..._wYrTeIBQSOSga

Photo taken 22nd Jan 2015
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/c3i1lhi0k..._SmSysEqpDC9Ya

My Second Plant.

https://www.dropbox.com/sc/icyorsxs8...JDgZw7ennu4Oca

Richard

Thanks for the background info! By the way, a dwarf banana is not necessarily short. It just means shorter with respect to the original cultivar. For example, Dwarf Brazilian fruits with a pstem height around 2 meters, whereas the standard Brazilian fruits at a pstem height of about 3 meters.

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Zeebie

Thanks for the information, I was under the impression that dwarf varieties where a lot shorter and primarily used indoor purposes.

Richard

In my view, growing a banana solely indoors for fruit production is a fallacy promoted by marketeers. First problem is the height. Bananas sprout their leaves upwards at first so most people would need a plant that fruits at a pstem height of two meters or less. So that restricts us to Super Dwarf Cavendish and a few others. These plants produce equally tiny fruit we're talking about 1cm x 9cm of flesh inside the skin of each finger in a bunch. Second problem is light. You'll need about 1200 Watts at 10 hours per day of 6400-6500 Kelvin color temperature light for 9 to 18 months per plant to bring it to fruit. Now unless you have a geothermal or hydroelectric power source on the property (or really deep pockets) this isn't going to happen. Instead, people taken in by these scammers usually end up with sick plants and feeling like they are poor gardeners. The sad thing is that they are probably good gardeners - they just chose the wrong plant to grow indoors.

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Zeebie

That really sucks, I am an outdoor plant person anyway, my house doesn't seem to get as much natural lighting as i had planned, I also have two Bengal cats that destroy any form of plant or seedlings that i bring indoors.

One thing was, I wasn't sure about the legality of growing a banana plant in my state, but it appears my grandmother got the plant around 2 years before all the laws and restrictions came into effect in the other states.

While researching, most other states in Australia have restrictions on growing banana plants, you can only have up to 10 plants on a certificate, If you want to moving them from one location to another you need permits and plant health certificates, it seems they are highly controlled due to primary banana industry's and disease control.

But i could not find any information in regards to my state on the DPI website. So after contacting them, i found out there is no restrictions in my state, as there is no established banana industry due to the climate. so there is no restrictions on how many plants i can grow and i am able to freely move them around.

However If i import a banana plant from another state ill need a soil health certificate to confirm there is no fire ants, other than that its all good. I am thinking i might look into getting a Blue Java, but id have to import it because i haven't seen a nursery sell banana plants.

I do how ever have a question, I have a plant that took a bit to much heat than i was expecting the other week as we are in mid summer, I put it in a spot where i thought it would get the morning sun and afternoon shade, turns out there was no afternoon shade. It does not look to good at this stage, but do you know how long it might take it to bounce back?

Richard

Bananas grow from a corm - a bulb of sorts. If it is ok then the plant will probably rebound. Thinking of a banana as a giant tulip that both flowers and fruits is not to far from the truth.

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