Johnsk9

Going Bananas is mailing cultivars which are propagated by tissue culture. I have bought tissue culture bananas that were wrong from different nurseries. Are the TC's from Going Bananas the real deal?

Richard

They purchase TC's from Agristarts -- who is known to sell medium height Namwa as Ice Cream and Tall Namwa as Misi Luki. Otherwise, in my experience Agristarts is reliable with cultivars -- and I used to buy 4 flats of 72 each per order.

As a retailer I learned the hard way about ordering "mixed flats" of TC's. These contain 2, 3, or 4 different cultivars. In such an order, the TC's are only labeled by row -- not individually. This is problematic because the TC's can and often do jump around in individual flats. So I would open my box shipment and find 6-12 loose TC's laying at one end of the flat and empty holes among various rows. Having no idea what the loose plants were I discarded them. But I also worried that some might have jumped and filled a vacant hole. As I grew them in 1 gallon pots that was born out by 2 sporting wine stains who should not. After a few rounds of this I retreated to ordering whole flats only.

I'm not accusing Growing Bananas of any "malpractice" -- in fact all I've heard are good things about this supplier. Rather, I wanted to point out why TC's from retailers have a poor reputation.

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Johnsk9

Thanks Richard. The grow there own right there why sell TC?To wait a year and find out you have a Tall Namwa or something else is disappointing

Botanical_Bryce

Going bananas told me they have agristarts tissue culture their stock and dont use agristarts stock. Buyers say otherwise.

Richard

Demand exceeds supply.

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subsonicdrone

i would have gone for the four varieties in one tray thing if i ever got around to ordering from agristarts
good to know

Richard

The fact that Namwa is often sold as Ice Cream or Misi Luki is well posted on this site and across the internet. I would say that anyone making that mistake as a buyer has only themselves to blame.

Once again, I hold Going Bananas and a few others harmless because they are reselling the name they received. This sets them apart from a number of folks (usually on eBay) that purposely sell just about any TC they can get as something else -- something in high demand.

While we are talking about "high demand", consider those who want a "cold tolerant" fruiting banana plant. Bananas are native to zone 12. A cold tolerant banana is something that survives year-round outdoors zone 10a (or mild 9b) under the hands of a skilled horticulturist.

Also, under the category of "cold tolerant" -- beware of fake cold tolerant plants such as "California Gold" and "Texas Star". These are simply Orinoco. Don't pay extra money for the label.

Then there is the category of "Indoor fruiting banana". What a scam. Don't fall for it.

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Nicolas Naranja

I have reason to believe that they do resell what Agristarts has...or at least they did. I went down there ten years ago when I was thinking of planting. They gave me a list of what they had available to sell in quantity, and it was exactly the same list as what Agristarts had available. Nothing wrong with that unless you know that something is up with their (agristarts) varieties. If it's a variety known to have issues, my sincere advice is to get a sucker and get pictures of the parent plant or visit the parent plant.

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