Experience is mostly derived from mistakes. Although I consider myself fully capable of making my own, I would prefer to learn from those of others, thus I joined bananas.org.
Last spring I wandered about in a garden shop and saw to my astonishment, that they had live banana plants (M. Basjoo) for sale, which was touted to have roots, hardy in Zone 5. Always a succor for trying something new I took one home.
Unfortunately it took some time, before I got around to planting it, because at first I could not decide which of my neighbours I should overwhelm with my soon to be huge 15’ high banana plant
, then later I enhanced my wealth of experience by committing another ‘mistake’ out of sheer stupidity. This led to an accident, which put me out of commission until late June, when I finally managed to assign my new prize possession its rightful domicile in mother earth. (See picture)
Of course I did not know enough at the time to plant it about 1’ deep for additional frost protection. Therefore I went just recently to elaborate lengths to get it all snuggled up with protective covers.
But that will be the subject of another post.
Best,
Olaf
PS: There was elsewhere some discussion about red veins in the leaves of the M. Basjoo. I was with those, who had not noticed such thing, but now, looking at this picture, I can see some in the latest leaf. Maybe they become more evident, when the leaf is backlit as in this photo?
PPS: Just now, after I typed all this, I don’t know how to integrate the picture into the post. The tutorial video went by in a blurr and was at times too small to read. I don't have the time to deal with that now, but the photo can be seen here:
Banana Gallery - DSC025351