DOMinPuna

Could someone explain to me why bananas stop developing on a flower spike, when there are continuing flowers that don't develop? I usually get several hands of bananas and then the flowers stop developing and the flower spike continues to produce, but nothing happens. Do we know the answer? Should the flower be cut off after banana production is obviously stopped? Thanks.
DOMinPuna

DoctorSteve

So you are saying the first sets of flowers (however many that may be) develop into fruit and from then on they do not? If so, from what I understand the later flowers are male so they will not develop into fruit, the first flowers are female so the do develop into fruit. Some cut the inflorescence off at the point where fruit stops developing so the plant can put all the energy into the fruit.

sunfish

They are male flowers

DOMinPuna

When one sees stocks of bananas growing in banana plantations with one stock yielding almost 100 pounds of bananas, and I get 2 or 3 hands of bananas, is it fertilization, climate, variety, soil?

Worm_Farmer

All the above

hydroid

I was just talking to Gabe about a very similar thing. I got my first Raja Puri to bloom but only produced about 4 hands of nice fruit, then the smaller males started. And like Gabe said: Although I live in a fairly warm climate, bananas are tropical plants by nature and need the year round warm weather to be working at their greatest potential. We get freeze's here in Alabama and it really slows them down alot.
But, I do this for fun and each year I learn more things and this year is the first time I got a Raja to fruit, so it's still alot of fun