Olav

Hi all, first posting.

I have a fairly mature blue ice cream banana tree (about 1.5 years old) with two small pups on the sides. A while ago I purchased the 4-4-7 Organic Fruit Fuel after reading about it here.

I was wondering how often I should apply it to the Tree. What I've been doing so far is adding 1tablespoon of it to a gallon milk jug of water, shaking and pouring all around the tree. I've been doing that once a week. Does that sound about right?

I am in Central Florida on the coast, zone 9.

I've yet to have any fruit though and was really hoping some day they'd grow in. Should I be applying any other amendments? I am mostly an "organic" gardener, so I generally use things like fish emulsion and kelp powder.

Any help would be appreciated as I'm hoping I get my first fruits this year!

Thanks for any help!
Olav

Richard

Olav,

To obtain proper dosage you'll need to measure by weight, not volume. An inexpensive battery-operated kitchen scale will do the job.

Here are the directions from the product label:

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Olav

Thanks so much Richard, I must have lost the paper that came with the container.

Would Bananas be a Fruit tree or Tomato/Melon? I'm assuming Fruit tree, but the amounts are very different between the two columns so want to make sure.

So, for fruit trees, I should weigh out 3lbs of the powder and apply 4 times during the growing season? (Or 12lbs of the powder in total?) I'm not sure I even have that much, I'll have to check. That seems like a lot!

I spoke with someone at the company and they suggested it worked better if applied weekly instead of so far apart. Is that not recommended anymore? If I did it weekly, would I weigh out 12lbs/(growing weeks)? I'm not sure how many growing weeks we get here, but I can look that up.

Thanks again!

Richard

Whomever you spoke to at the company must have been thinking about a different product.

Note in the directions you may apply up to 3 supplemental dosages per year. Treat the young plants such as transplanted pups with the vegetable dosage and more mature bananas as trees.

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Olav

Thanks again Richard. I'm a total newbie. So, the weight is not the amount of nitrogen or anything, right? I should just weigh out 4lbs of the powder, and mix into the mulch for my mature tree in medium fertility soil? Is that correct? So, just take the powder and spread it around the mulch about half the diameter of the tree?

Just want to verify before I burn up the tree, waste fertilizer and poison the intracoastal waterway near me

Thanks!

Richard

Correct.

Correct. Although it might look like a powder to you, it is really a granular.

"about half the diameter of the tree" -- If you mean about a 3-4 foot radius, Yes. If you mean 3-4 inch radius, No.

Make sure water will contact it every time you irrigate.

It's low concentration and slow release. In my experience you won't have any of these problems.

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PA BananaMan

Would this work good for a musa basjoo ?

Vigoro Tomato and Vegetable Garden Plant Food Plus Calcium
(12-10-5)

or would Jobe’s Organics Granular All-Purpose Fertilizer (4-4-4) be better since its closer to the fruit fuel npk

Richard

Basjoo is an ornamental banana. The fruit is regarded by most as inedible. So I would say no the idea of something close to the organic fruit fuel or the tomato food for that matter.

I recommend Grow More 20-6-16 for ornamental bananas, but there are other formulas with similar NPK ratios such as 3-1-2, 4-1-3, 5-1-4, 10-3-8, etc.

For the article I wrote about Banana care in temperate climates, please see Banana Cultivation In Non-Tropical Climates

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