kaczercat

anyone know of any? both are in 24ish?? Gal pots. I have my two biggest plants I want to flower ASAP. They have 5 feet of p-stem.should I remove all pups? more fert? water less? Thanks

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Matt

crazy banana

I think the tip and/or trick is just called patience as bananas flower "whenever they feel like it"

Abnshrek

What are they? I'd knock off the pups w/o doing root damage, or minimal anyways.. and then chill, cause rushing to failure isn't an option. :^)

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sandy0225

I'd leave the pups on, keep making sure you water and fertilize well, and chill out for a while. You didn't say what kind of bananas they are, but I bet they're less than four years old, which seems to be the magic number around here (indiana, also zone 5). I bet you have a while to go.
The reason I said to leave the pups on there is because I've found with my ice cream bananas, I grow them as a "mat in a pot" and leave the pups on. The first time they flower, then a pup from that "mat" will flower next year, and so on and so on. So you end up with a flowering stem each year, barring some accident like a windstorm knocking your biggest stalk down. When they get too rootbound, then split them in half and the largest stem will still flower, but this year we're not getting as many bananas, only 12-13 so far and now it's starting to put out male blooms, so we've got all we're going to get.
But it's still cool to see them bloom and flower

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Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

nph

So how does Icecream work out in pots? I have them outdoors mostly since they turn quite huge in pots?
I tried Dwarf Orinoco and they seem to attract pests real easy.

How is Dwarf Cavendish in pots?

What about Dwarf Brazilian, Mona Lisa (FH02)?

kaczercat

orinoco and unknown was bought as mysore but ended up not being an actual mysore. I've only been leaving 2 pups on per mat. I've had these plants just over 2 years. in pots I though they flowered at a much shorter hight? is that if space is limited?

Thanks Sandy!

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Matt

lkstapleton

You had asked what to do to get them to flower. I just got my first flower here in San Jose after two years. One of the things that I did a little differently this year was that starting in very early spring, I hit them with a lot more 0-10-10 than I ever imagined putting on a plant before. I guess they just really go through phosphorous and potassium. Normally I would worry about burning them, but I fertilized them with a few handfuls every two weeks or so with Dr. Hort's mixture, which also contains humic acid and micronutrients, and that seems to have helped. I have mine in 45-gallon containers on our very hot, sunny balcony.

Lisa

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sandy0225

The ice cream seems to be getting about 9-10 feet tall in a large tub. Bordelons will clump and flower at about 6-7 feet in a 25 gallon pot. Bordelons also seem to take only about 3 years around here. But that's the only two except super dwarf I've bloomed so far. The others I sold before they bloomed.

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Sandy Burrell



Northern Tropics Greenhouse
1501 East Fuson Road
Muncie, IN 47302
www.northerntropics.com


specializing in bananas, heirloom tomatoes and water gardening plants~
check out our new online store at our website!

LilRaverBoi

I'm with Sandy....leave the pups on there. Everyone seems to think (and I was guilty of this in the past as well) that pups drain energy out of the main plant, but this isn't the case. They will continue to grow the same regardless of whether you remove pups or leave them on. And as Sandy said, if you leave them on, you have a much better chance of getting fruit more frequently. It just takes a few years to get them large enough to flower/fruit, so be patient. Just stick to regular fertilizing/watering and give them plenty of sun.

To be honest, best advice I can give you is to plant them in the ground during the summer, let them get full advantage of the unlimited root space, then pot them up again in the fall/winter. This will give you maximum plant health, fastest growth and since you are essentially 'repotting' them every fall, it keeps the soil well aerated/not compacted to prevent root rot. Also, doing this prevents them from becoming root-bound since they're only ever in the pot for maybe 6 months at a time. Not sure if you have an area you can plant things in the ground, but you will CERTAINLY notice the difference in plant growth/vigor compared to pot-only growth.

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BANANA RAVE!
Feel the beat from start to stop, dancin' and movin' from bottom to top!
lilraverboi@genxglow.com
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I'm Bryan with a Y! There is no 'I' in BRYAN!

LindaGov

Hi, I have 2 container banana trees (don't know species). Want to transplant pups. How?w/o killing one or the other. Usually parent dies.

LilRaverBoi

How big are the pups? You will want to wait till they have some size before dividing off pups. Here is a thread showing how to separate pups.

__________________
BANANA RAVE!
Feel the beat from start to stop, dancin' and movin' from bottom to top!
lilraverboi@genxglow.com
RIP Tog Tan. We love you and will always remember you!
I'm Bryan with a Y! There is no 'I' in BRYAN!