NANAMAN

I know that taste is a very subjective thing, especially with fruits that have so many variables. Flavor (fruity, sweet, acid, sub-acid ) Texture (dry, moist, dense, soft, firm, etc..). The climate some these varieties are grown in plays an important role in taste. Also fruit picked not fully developed,as colder weather approaches,may ripen but suffers, sometimes greatly, in quality and flavor.

I have found it hard to get a reliable description of how any of the different banana varieties tastes' would rank as compared to my taste buds. So the only thing left to do was grow as many of them as I could.

Starting with all the varieties that got high taste rankings on different web sites, and a few from members of this site, to date I have tasted 50+ varieties. All were grown in my back yard, in sunny S. Fl. under as optimal of conditions as I could muster, with the exception of 2 or 3 varieties. All of them have been desert bananas, except for Siam Ruby and Ae Ae.

My goal from the beginning was to find 5 varieties of desert bananas that I liked the best, then weed the rest out. I ran out of room quickly, so I started weeding as I went, growing 10 or so mats at a time.

The results of my experiment have been a bit disappointing, in that I thought I would have a hard time deciding which of the last 10 or 15 varieties would make the cut down to 5. Instead, I am sure of only 2 varieties-
Manzano and Chini Champa.

I guess that just proves I'm a little picky.lol. At least I have room to grow a few more, who knows what will be next!

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