Originally Posted by chong

The Texas Stars that I received from Ty Ty survived the first winter in my unheated greenhouse and in fact did better than the CA Gold that I got from Joe Real. The CA Gold survived as well, just that it died down to the corm and did not resprout that following Spring. The TX Star grew to over 4 ft. before the onset of Winter. Meanwhile, before chucking the corm of the CA Gold, I removed it from its soil and noticed a couple of white spots on opposite sides of the corm. I promptly cleaned it and dried it out before putting it in a mixture of pumice and water gel. After several months, the white spots developed into 2 pups that grew to over a foot each.

The TX Stars, in the meantime remained at the under 5 ft height into the following Winter, and turned brown as the weather got colder. So did my 5 year old Dwarf Orinoco and D. Brazilian that were trailing it in height. I just left them as they were and withheld watering, thinking that it might go into hybernation. That same Winter, I kept the CA Gold indoors and the pups stayed green. As fate would have it, I lost my job and was pre-occupied in job hunting that I neglected my plants. So by the folowing Spring, I had lost most of my plants, including many bananas. The TX Stars, D. Orinoco, D. Brazilians, even the Thomsonii and CA Hardy (it was over 4 ft tall), were just a hole in their respective pots.

The CA Gold was doing great when I moved it to Richland, WA where I'm currently working, but last Summer I slowly placed it to more sunny spot and all the leaves burned frjom the intense Richland sunshine. I brought it back to its original shady spot and they re grew new leaves.

In November last year, the plants ithat I brought with me in Richland were taken indoors in my living room. All this Winter, the CA Gold did great until two months ago, it was infested with spider mites, and they almost whithered away. Several other bananas were infested as well, and in fact died. The 2 CA Golds are still struggling but I think that they will survive.

I had several banana varieties that were left behind in my home in Seattle, and for a while all were doing great. When the temps dipped in the single digits, all but the TyTy Gold that I got from Richard and one !000 Fingers died. Both are indoors in my house in Seattle and are sporting new leaves.

If my work situation becomes more stable, and I can complete my home project in Seattle, I will definitely order several corms of TX Stars from TyTy. That time will probably come when I'm close to retirement. If only I could have retired a couple of years ago. ( Sigh!)

Hope Harvey can give an update on how his TX Stars are doing.

Also, big thanks to Tony for his update. Hope he can get some bloom/fruit this year! Did you get yours from Ty Ty or TX? I tried emailing the source from TX several years ago, but she never responded.