Nana Nut

I moved to north central Florida several years ago and have been trying to get bananas to fruit ever since, but we have too short a growing season here before they freeze. With the help of some great recommendations from this forum on what kind of bananas to plant for this area, I have now dug out my Rajapura and Blue Java stands and am readying the area to receive the new banana plants this spring.

What I would like to know is: does anyone have any experience with retail mail order companies, which ones are good and which ones to avoid?? I would prefer to buy them from a grower in Florida, if possible, as I feel those plants may be acclimated to Florida's soils/temperatures. I see there are several listed on a Google search, but thought I'd ask the group before buying.

Before anyone suggests buying from a local nursery, we have several here where I live, BUT they don't get their plants in until around May or June, and I would like to get mine going before then. They also don't stock many varieties. Hence, I'd prefer going direct to a grower, if possible.

Thanks for any and all feedback, folks!

Bob

Have you tried these guys? They're nice people and reliable.
Welcome to Going Bananas of Homestead, Florida!

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Bob3

There's one "popular" FL grower that has a horrible feedback rating; of the people that have posted on "another forum/board", over 40% had bad experiences, with the neutrals added it's pushed a lot closer to 50%.
Since I've not done business with them myself it would be "bad form" to name drop.
Do a google search (and follow-up) before ordering from any supplier.

About your Blue Java; do you have a south facing wall on your house that gets regular sunshine? It's fairly easy to build a little "shelter" out of scrap PVC pipe, plastic sheeting, and of course duct tape.
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kelehawaii

I'll give 'Going Bananas' a vote of confidence as well. When I was in the Tampa Bay Area I bought a number of banana plants from them when they came to Manatee County for the annual Tropical Plant Growers show and sale. Plenty of varieties to choose from and the stock was healthy and grew vigorously for me.

Aloha from Hawai'i

legumepole

I bought some plants from Jimmy.
He does mail order and advertises in the clasified section of this forum.

He sent quality plants that were exactly as advertised.
The price was good, and the plants are all thriving.

I would buy bananas from him again,


Jeff

Nana Nut

Thank you for the recommendations and the warning. This is exactly what I needed.

As for the Blue Java, they are situated on a fence row (privacy fence 6') and they are in sun all day. The problem with them is that there isn't a long enough growing season AND it freezes here in December or January, so I wouldn't want to keep them anyway. And besides, there is NO way I could tent these things; they were ENORMOUS. They were at least 12 feet tall, possibly taller; couldn't even reach the top on a ladder. Beautiful plants, but I really want to grow them for foliage AND nanners, hence the total revamp of the stand.

venturabananas

Nana Nut,

I agree, Going Bananas is a good operation. They have been very helpful to me and have sent quality plants.

I'm not sure I understand your plan. You're going to replace your stands of Rajapuri and Blue Java with what? I'm not sure there are varieties of fruiting bananas that are a lot more cold hardy than those two.

Good luck.

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Nana Nut

I probably didn't phrase myself very well, sorry. I guess what I meant to say was I am replacing my banana stand with some that possibly have a shorter fruiting season. The dilemma I've had is that I get wonderful, beautiful stands of banana plants that start putting out flowers in late August or September. It freezes here usually in December or January, not giving enough time for them to completely fruit.

Also, my plants were HUGE, preventing me from being able to cover them and extend the season longer.

My thinking was that if I planted smaller variety bananas, I could at least maybe manage to tent them and get fruit at some point, OR located a variety with a shorter growing season.

The bananas I'm thinking of planting this spring are dwarf cavendish and Goldfinger. If anybody knows of any nanners with shorter growing seasons and cold hardiness than those, please let me know!

venturabananas

Well, dwarf Cavendish is not cold hardy (compared to many others), but it is about the shortest cultivar you can get that produces good numbers of decent size fruit -- and so would be the easiest to cover.

There was a lot of talk about Veinte Cohol having a very fast fruiting cycle, but I'm not sure if there was more to that than talk, or if it would be fast enough for your needs. It is also too tall to protect and makes small bunches of small fruit.

Goldfinger is not a dwarf and so would be hard to protect. I know that some people (e.g., Tony, AKA Sunfish) consistently get them to fruit at 7' of p-stem, but 9' is probably closer to the average and in your climate they might get even taller. It does produce delicious fruit, based on my limited sample size of about 10 varieties so far (none produced on my property... yet!).

Dwarf Namwah might be worth a try. Shorter than goldfinger (about 7' p-stem on average) and pretty tolerant of cold. And very tasty fruit.

I'm surprised Rajapuri didn't work out for you. Here in Southern California, they fruit at 5-7' and are cold tolerant.

Good luck. Let us know what you end up planting and how it works out.

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rick2001

Look for Veinte Cohol or Musa Senorita... they have a shorter growing season.

Bye

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Nana Nut

Actually, the Rajapura did great insofar as the plant was concerned. Got HUGE and flowered every year, just wasn't enough time for the fruit to mature before freeze hit.

I will definitely try and find the varietes you guys listed with shorter growing seasons. So far, no luck, but will keep looking, and thanks a, well, bunch!!

mango_kush

Going Bananas has the best nursery stock Ive seen. You can find cheaper but you will not find a better value. Ive bought three bananas from "greenearth" and one died shortly after, the specimens were small. the specimens I bought from Going Banans were established healthy and some like siam ruby even with pups larger then the specimens from Greenearth.

you can also find cheaper plants on ebay. be aware you will have to nurse these specimens longer in containers. specimens from going bananas are ground ready.

physical nurseries have better stock then mail order operations

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venturabananas

Going Bananas does carry Veinte Cohol. I bough one from them a couple of months ago.

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RobG7aChattTN

You might want to trade those Blue Java and Raja Puri. You might even trade them for a variety you want. One man's trash is another man's treasure!

Nana Nut

I wish I'd thought of that before I dug them up.

Actually, though, these things were humongous, and I mean really huge. Several of the corms were over a foot across, and it wouldn't have been feasible to mail them, frankly, because they weighed many, many pounds. I only had them about three years and loved the foliage, but I really would love to have my own nannas off the plant some day!!!

Kostas

You could have protected the pseudostems of your already established bananas over the winter,even trimmed to as many feet tall as you could protect relatively easilly(say 6 feet for example)and you would almost surely get one or more to flower early and mature in time this spring. Your problem was timing of flower emergence because you were loosing the pseudostems every winter. Had you protected the pups(all but the flowering stems)you would have already gotten bananas as these pups would flower earlier in the year thanks to the headstart they would have.

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harveyc

A bit off-topic, but I gave a friend half of a large Praying Hands corm once and he reported later he got three pups off of it. You don't need that much mass to produce pups.

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Darkman

That's exactly what I'm trying his year. Next spring I'll have the big unveiling and hopefully I'll have fruit early to mid summer.

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Darkman in Pensacola

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Bob3

Dang, this is a good thread; thanks for starting it Nana Nut... ... I'm in the same pickle with my Blue Javas.

The funny thing is, I planted the same plants at my buddy's house a few miles away & they have no problem with the frost, got hit just once in the 6 - 8 years or so since I planted them. He's a couple hundred feet higher in elevation & that's all it takes.

Back at my place, the tent for the Dwarf Orinocos up against my house is a really nice feature, they're right outside my office, but the Blue Javas aren't really a viable plant for us for the same reasons as you have.
I may have to dust off the old cloning rig when I narrow down a good short season plant (like you're looking for).

Speaking of the Dwarf Orinoco, it's a dandy fruit, being very tasty either yellow or green, fried up Tostone-style.

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Nana Nut

Yeah, dudes, I really loved my Blue Java. The plants were just awesome and beautiful.

I had no real problem keeping them alive; when it frosts here, the plant simply come up the next year and are over 12 feet in no time.

The problem is the fruiting season is too short, and by the time I get a flag, there's not enough time for the fruit to develop before getting whacked by frost...

Real bummer! Hopefully the new plants with shorter seasons will do the trick. Fingers crossed.