Hammocked Banana

I figured it was time I started a diary type thread to help me keep track of things and document different things I'm going to be trying in the coming seasons. Guess I should start with some nanners!

Grand Naine - July 15, 2012


Aug 17, 2013


April 16, 2014 - Hoping for fruit from this one this year, hopefully it will get warm here soon so it can get it outside for some sun and things can get going.

Notice the christmas ornament...this is to keep the emerging leave from jamming into the roof, the last leaf did and it got all jammed up and choked a bit. It'll grow out of it once its outside and that lowest leaf falls off, but I'll see if this helps. Some leaves are also droppy on mom and pups because of xmas ornaments hung too close to the end of the leaves...this was intentional as it made an funky xmas tree for us this year!

April 6, 2014 - Under lights: GN #2 on the right, Zebrinia on the left. Also can you spot 1 papaya, 4 dragon fruit, 3 pineapples, agave. false dracaena, european fan palm seedling, avocado, napenthes and black magic elephant ear?


Ensete maurelii - April 16, 2013. Just purchased and garden show, transplanted and showered. Handsome fellas supervising.


Sept 18, 2013 - Was grown in the garden all year and was just dug up. GN in the background.


Initially planned to to try to keep it growing all winter but it was too big and I didn't have the space once everything came in so it was put in a window that didn't get as much sun. It got laggy and was leaning pretty bad to I wacked the ma'.

Jan 15, 2014


My mom posing with a leaf since its impossible to teach her to use a camera lol.


Ok maybe I shouldn't have fed the WHOLE thing to the worms, they were busy for a while ater this.


April 6, 2014 - Here we are 2.5 months later and she's aching to get back outside.


Gunna have to wait another few weeks to update the basjoos since they're all still tucked in for the winter as were still getting lows around freezing at night.

Hammocked Banana

Some more plants waiting to go out after a winter that was way too long. All these pics were taken yesterday.

Giant Birds of paradise


1 Year old BOP, this guy may look little but its unreal whats underground. This thing has roots as thick as my thumb!


Moro blood orange


My favourite EE. This will be the only EE that I overwinter indoors from now on, the rest will be stored dry in the basement.


My momma Jade tree, starting to look nice. I'm training it as a bonsai-esc tree shape with a trunk and round canopy area. I recently transplanted into this pot, it had been in a little 6" pot for too long. Wanted to show the pot a little bit, was just a regular terracotta pot that my gf painted up and now looks much nicer in the house. All of my other jade plants have been started from this one as either a cutting when pruning, or more commonly just a leaf that falls off I will root in a random container and give away once it gets to an ok size.


3.5 year old dwarf pomegranate, has flowered the last 2 years but fruit never held. Should do good this year now that I finally up potted it. Other 2 year old pom is in a similar sized pot also so we'll see if it'll catch up. I've pruned both pretty heavily their whole life.


Spring must be around the corner bc plumeria is firing up!


Lastly some disappointment...my big papaya looking hideous after being sprayed for mites. I find papayas and EEs are the worst for attracting mites, can never get rid of them. Bad thing with papayas is they don't like to be sprayed, even with soapy water, especially when they are inside and growth is weak. I usually spray them in the shower and then spray them off with water after a few mins, however I only do this with the small ones. I actually dragged this big bugger all the way to the bathroom and managed to get it into the shower (my back was not happy about this) and washed it off after spraying. My efforts were not good enough for it however and its dropped half its leaves with the other half completely damaged from the spray. Its new growth is still ok however so I'll see if I can still get some fruit off of her. I may ground plant this one this year as it has flowered the last year and a half but set no fruits, the flowers drop before they open. It is a heri. I bought a bunch of new varieties recently from aloha seeds so I'm gunna try to find a good variety for my situation. My plan is to transplant them early to a big pot like this and push growth this year to the point of flowering and ground plant next year. This plan may change ;-)


More to come...

Hammocked Banana

I also got some hardy plants that will be planted outside eventually. I do plan on moving to a new place soon so palms will probably stay in pots until the move.

Hardy Cacti - All are hardy in my zone, except for the snowball cactus which I will probably keep in a pot, or plant and dig up each winter. The rest of the cacti are of the Opuntia genus. I believe the one with the big round pads is the edible prickly pear, but I'm not sure as the fruit did not fill in last year.


A better look at some from last summer.


Prickly Pear bloom from last summer. So beautiful!!


Snowball cactus starting to grow!



Cold Hardy Palms - Most of these will be planted outside and protected with styrofoam boxes and xmas lights and heat cables. At least one favourite seedling from each variety was up-potted earlier than the rest and kept under the bigger grow light. Most seedlings are still in solo cups for the time being until I can find some tall tree pots this year. Current types I have sprouted are tachycarpus fortunei, t. wagnerianus, nannorrhops ritchiana, n. ritchiana var. kashmir, chamaerops humilis, c. humilis var. certifera, butia odorata, b. eriospatha, jubaea chilensis, and washintonia filfera. Waiting to germ still: rhapidophyllum hystrix, sabal minor (Cape Hatteras Giant), sabal tamaulipas and brahea armata.

Washy - hopefully get some real leaves on this guy this year. There's a little bit of fungus on some leaves because I left all the palm seedlings outside for a few good frosts to toughen them up a bit. Washy don't particularly like my climate ;-)


T. fortunei far left, waggy back left, butia eriospatha in the front with the wierd curly strap leaf, tall nannorrhops kasmir in the center, and twin butia odorata on the right.


Twin b. odorata

Hammocked Banana

Now that were caught up, it's time to boil down some maple syrup!! If you don't like spider dogs, you're no friend of mine!! (lol just kidding)

Funkthulhu

Brady, you look like you've got my problem times 5. I really wish my basement had more than 7 foot ceilings, or that these bananas wouldn't grow so fast. . .

Here's to hoping we both have very productive summers!

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"Ph'nglui musaglw'nanna Funkthulhu R'Omahaea wgah'basjoo fhtagn"
"In his house at Omaha, dread Funkthulhu plants bananas."

Hammocked Banana

I hear ya! Its an addicting hobby, problem is the collection just keeps growing. Gunna be real interesting this fall with more nanners, lots of papaya and once the big dragon fruit trellis is built. I'll deal with that problem when I get there though...

Funkthulhu

I already made a promise to the better half that this fall I would bring back in only the healthy palms and trees under 7 feet, and the bananas will get cut down to the Pstem and put in storage. . .

Still, that's going to be a lot of pots in the 25-50+ kg range. . . (and I don't know where I'll store the Pstems/corms that they won't grow anyway)

__________________
"Ph'nglui musaglw'nanna Funkthulhu R'Omahaea wgah'basjoo fhtagn"
"In his house at Omaha, dread Funkthulhu plants bananas."

cannasrus

Great Pics, we have it bad too. I have a 2 car gurge full of lights, plants, bulbs, germination chamber...an old refrigerator, a small green house se up indoors for seedlings with more lights, and best of all about 25 bananna plants I.

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A regular ride is better than a dressed up walk.

subsonicdrone

youre overwintered plants look healthier than mine! nice and green
looking forward to getting mine into some real sun soon too...
should be in about 2 months at the rate things are melting here!

Hammocked Banana

Where are you located? What zone?

subsonicdrone

toronto

i work outdoors and in peoples backyards so i have seen bananas scattered across the city.. but none as big in the beaches neighbourhood of toronto with 2 huge bananas in a front yard

ive gone through 2 winters so far... this winter i kept the plants in containers and put them under lights.. spider mites wreaked havoc on my lasiocarpa.. DC seem stunted but ok..
last winter i washed all soil off the corms and stored dry rolled in newspaper but a flood in the basement caused half of my varieties to die

bought my first banana at a supermarket in niagara and the rest at rice road nuseries...

bought other tropicals from flora exotica once i was hooked!


ever had fruit?

Hammocked Banana

Ah another Torontonian, excellent! Unfortunately I have never had an edible banana flower, but expect one from my main GN this year, hopefully by the end of July if I will ever be able to get it outside! If we have a good season I also expect some flowers on my basjoos. I will have to drive through the beaches to investigate these nanners this year, my gf lives right on the water on Queens Quay. It would be hard to keep all my plants in Toronto, the gf and I have been looking at some places and she doesn't like it when I say "this place is no good, where will all the plants go?" Haha some people will never understand.

ez

Do you want to see Grand Nain female flowers?

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Sting_stong

Thanks for posting all your plants, Brady. It's nice to see other Ontarians here who are just as crazy as I am. I'm in Ottawa.

I've been growing musa basjoo, musa zebrina, pineapples, citrus, and I've now got papaya, cinnamon, and quats coming up (thanks Olaf!).

Subsonic, where exactly in the Beaches are those bananas located? My sister lives there and I wouldn't mind taking a walk through the area this summer.

Hammocked Banana

Well that's not all of them haha, just some favourites or ones I baby. I'll do a dragon fruit post once I get them on their new trellis, love them too.

It is great to see other's like me near by. I appreciate all the responses, and I welcome Ed or anyone else who wants to post pics for comparison or whatever. Ed maybe throw in a male flower shot also. I'm 95% sure on its ID based on it being cavendish (leaf ratios/open petioles and colouring), red on the p-stem and dwarf nature. It was also sold as grand naine, but that doesn't mean anything to me around here. I really don't want to jinx myself too much talking about it flowing but would be nice to have a certain id if it did.

ez

From what I can see and by reading your detailed description I would say it's Grand Nain, more advanced members might see something different.

The only reason why I wanted to share an image of GN flowers is because I like to share photos, I wasn't trying to say you're not growing GN.

I don't have pics of the male flower only female, banana flowers represent a small part of the puzzle, you've seen photos of my plants and even if they don't look exactly the same as yours it's only because their growing in different microclimates. If you have any doubt the only way to know if it's the real deal is to wait until it's has fruit.

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subsonicdrone

apparently there are good deals on banana plants at the food terminal in the west end on queensway
its probably close to the right time to check it out, i have not yet been there personally

Hammocked Banana

Thanks for the pic ed, those baby nanners look pretty big already at that point! Hopefully I will have some someday close to that.

Subsonicdrone do you have any idea what type of plants they have? Its just a short skip west for me, maybe I'll check it out. Looking for an indigo berry haskap and the only place I've seen one was for sale a farmers market in Toronto (but couldn't take it home then). Maybe I could find one there, you are right it is the season...

subsonicdrone

i dont know
i was at work and saw a banana plant in a big window and asked the gardener about it..we got to chatting and i mentioned that i had seen banana plants for sale at a convenience store on gerrard that were at least 3 feet tall...thats when he mentioned the food terminal.. he said it is where all the convenience stores get their stock

Hammocked Banana

Finally we had a warm day where I was home and could put the plants outside.


Unwrapped the rhotodendrons a few weeks ago. Pics from today, not looking great but hopefully should bounce back, even the middle one, you can see a little green near the bottom. Don't mind all the crap in the background, there was so much snow we lost access to the shed and storage space.


Even worse news (is there any good news after last winter?)...uncovered one of my basjoo mats, it was a first year mat, but I had a lot of confidence it would make it through the winter with a decent amount of p-stem because of its sheltered south-facing location location next to the house. Anyways I was super disappointed to see that the whole thing was mush as far down as I could feel. I'm just hoping that I remembered to plant this guy really deep.

Basjoo Mat #2 - Oct 1, 2013

Today

The little yucca sailed through the winter though... Weird.


One potential issue with this mat is that it didn't always have a lot of snow piled up around it bc it would melt quick from the sun. This extra insulation might have made some difference, but I doubt it because this protection was (i thought) bulletproof. Hopefully I don't have to replace this mat, but I would say my chances are actually kinda high. Hopefully the other mats held out better, but one is still under 2 feet of snow so I'm gunna wait to uncover them.