cptcatz

Hi, I'm new here. I live in south Florida and decided on a whim to grow bananas so I bought an "ice cream" pup online a couple years ago. It has been growing great and flowered a couple months ago. After all the bananas formed, I cut off the flower with a pair of shears. I was pretty disappointed with the number of bananas it produced but figured it was the first crop so maybe the future ones would be bigger. Anyways, shortly after I cut off the flower, the stalk started turning black from the end side. The rot started moving towards the trunk and the bananas were rotting as well. I decided to cut the trunk down today and hope the next one will be better. I tried looking all over the internet and couldn't find any reason for this. The only thing I could think of is the shears weren't clean and caused some sort of disease, since the rot began where I cut it. Any thoughts? Thanks

pitangadiego

Leave the flower on, or cut it off 12" or more below the last hand of bananas.

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Gabe15

Your problems aren't related to cutting the flower bud off. That plant was very unhealthy before flowering, and clearly made a very small bunch on a weak and small plant to begin with, and also looks like it doens't have many functional leaves on that fruiting shoot. If it also took a couple years to get to that state of growth, it's definitely lacking something, likely nutritional. The variety you have is actually Namwah, and not the true Ice Cream. It normally does quite well in S. FL. I recommend to make sure your plant is getting enough fertility and water, and see if the second fruiting is better.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

cptcatz

Hi guys. So I've been giving the tree much more fertilizer and it has been looking a lot better than it did a year ago. Two more trunks recently fruited... the first has another small crop, the second looks a bit better but still smaller than other banana trees I've seen around town. My bigger concern is the black spots showing up at the bottom of the flower stem of the first flower. It almost looks like what happened last year (see first post) but not nearly as bad. Are those spots concerning or normal? Also, any thoughts on how to get bigger crops? Thanks

Janelle525

Yours looks similar to mine, it's my fastest growing banana and seems like it needs way more nutrition because of it. I also planted it where there was grass so the soil fertility wasn't very good. I think over the yrs of adding compost and nutrients it will do better and better.

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Super Dwarf Cavendish, Tall Namwah, Goldfinger, Praying Hands, Raja Pisang, Manzano.

cptcatz

It looks like these bananas are going the same route as the first batch. Any ideas what the problem is? Is this entire plant diseased?

Janelle525

I don't know about disease but you haven't mentioned what your feeding schedule looks like so we can better help. Bananas need a lot of fertilizer or compost.

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Super Dwarf Cavendish, Tall Namwah, Goldfinger, Praying Hands, Raja Pisang, Manzano.

cptcatz

About a cup of 10-10-10 fertilizer once a month. Is that still too little?

Akula

Fertilizer
Info:Fertilizer - Bananas Wiki