Clare_CA

One of my Thai 'Tanee' bananas is starting to flower. This is the first one to flower since they were planted in April, 2010. I am told that the fruit is seeded and inedible. I do have several nice Thai pups that can be separated if anyone is interested.

My AeAe is also flowering as well.

Sorry these pictures are so dark. It is fairly cloudy today, and these were taken from inside my chicken run.





Here is the AeAe:

keyupid

Saw your AEAE regarding pups, would LOVE to have one, last one I bought and paid way tooooooo much, didn't make it, even though I followed all instructions, roots(?) were black when I unpacked it, had a bad feeling about the plant, but hoped for the best.

Clare_CA

Hey Keyupid, don't feel bad. I bought four AeAe pups when I was first starting out growing bananas, and they all died. Three of them were too little to begin with and didn't have enough corm, and the fourth one was my fault because I moved it a couple of times when it was trying to grow new roots, and it eventually rotted.

I think it is natural for some root loss when first shipped and planted, but some rotting roots can be from too moist soil. My friend, Miamimax here on this forum, recommends half perlite and half well-draining potting soil when first planting an AeAe in a pot. I did this with my fifth AeAe, and it survived and was planted in the ground and is the one flowering.

I have found that it really doesn't make a difference if you lose some or all of the old roots when you first receive and transplant a banana pup as long as there is ample corm. New roots will sprout from the corm given some time and if left undisturbed. The most important thing, in my opinion, is to get an AeAe with ample corm.

Another thing is, when I ship a pup, I don't wrap the roots in plastic with a moist paper towel. I just set it in the styrofoam peanuts. I think it is better to let the roots dry out a little than to keep them too moist and risk fungus and rot. The roots can easily be re-hyrdated once planted if they dry out too much.

I think I paid about $125 for each AeAe that I bought. I will probably charge about the same when I sell mine as I am trying to recoupe some of my initial investment as I spent nearly $1000 on variegated banana pups initially. However, I intend to wait until the pups are very large before I sell them just to ensure that they have a large amount of roots and corm attached and will succeed on their own once separated from the mat.

You may want to consider a Thai pup as an alternative as these tend to be a lot less fussy about soil conditions and weather conditions, and they are robust growers and puppers compared to the AeAe. However, I'm not sure that they would make as good of a container plant as they tend to grow tall quickly and pup fairly rapidly. Eventually, the AeAe becomes tall too.

Right now, I have one large AeAe pup, but I'm not going to sell it because the striping isn't that impressive; however, I do have four other little ones coming in with a lot of white on them, and so I think those can be sold once they are much bigger. Send me a p.m. in a month or two, and I'll give you an update on them. I do have three Thai pups that are ready for separation now.

keyupid

Thanks for all your info, my pup arrived wrapped in foil and plastic, will keep in touch with you on the AEAE how about an Indonesian Ivory banana???? If I don't remember to email you keep me posted also.
Thanks Molly

Clare_CA

Hi Molly, if I'm not mistaken, the Indonesian Ivory banana is the same as the Thai variegated banana 'Tanee,' but I could be wrong. I bought my variegated bananas under all different names, and they all turned out to be the same banana. The variegation, however, is not stable so some pups are more variegated than others. Some have more white on them than others, and this is what may have led to the name 'Indonesian Ivory,' perhaps for selling purposes on eBay.

keyupid

Thanks for all the info, I really like all the varigation in the leafs, don't want a plain green one. Keep me posted on pups.
Molly

Clare_CA

I have two Tanee's flowering now. One has green bananas, and the other bananas are variegated. The last picture is dark, but the bananas are not variegated on that bunch, and it is a less-variegated banana than the other.