Quote:
Originally Posted by venturabananas
Unless I've misunderstood what Gabe has said, he has a different take on fruit production of banana mats in the home environment than Richard has. I'll try to paraphrase what I believe he's said:
A mat from which you have removed no suckers will produce just as much fruit as one pruned down to a single stem plus a follower. The difference will be that on a crowded mat, each stem will produce fewer fruit -- but the total will be about the same as a two-stem mat. The advantage of not pruning out pups for the home grower is that the banana bunches on different stems will be formed at different times, thus spreading out the availability of fruit across the year.
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I agree with that completely, especially the phrase "about the same". The corm has a fixed production capacity, but there will be a measurable loss of efficiency when delivered over multiple stems. The actual loss is probably insignificant in terms of number of fingers. However, if you're not in the tropics then you probably don't want your production spread out across the entire year because 1/4 to 1/2 of the crop will be temperature limited.