Re: Gros Michel
I've got several ideas that I'm going to pursue for fruiting tall bananas in Kansas.
1) I'm going to build bigger greenhouses in the 12-15' range. The tall bananas won't be able to fruit in there, but the plan is to time things so that they're pushing the ceiling in April, then plant them outdoors. If they bloom before frost, I'll then be able to move them back into greenhouses and lay them almost horizontal (propped up a bit with supports, but with roots still in the nutrient water) until the fruit ripens.
2) I'd like to experiment with something similar to #1, but with the tunnel covering a pit that I dig to give it more height.
3) I'd like to experiment with growing a tall all the way to fruition inside a short tunnel by laying it sideways. I think I'll run into major 'bending toward the light' problems, though, unless I orient the tunnel along a NE/SW axis so that it can grow towards the southwest (i.e. the direction all my plants naturally lean/grow). I've seen pics and comments about bananas bending to extreme angles within just a couple of days, so unless I make a rotisserie contraption to continually rotate the plant, a NE/SW oriented greenhouse may be the easiest way to pull off this method.
4) I'll continue to experiment with chopping. For example, the Raja Puri and Double that are mostly hidden by the GM in my pic are plants that I chopped at ~4' of p-stem (down to 1'); they are now almost the height they were before the chop, but with vastly larger leaves and thicker p-stems than they had at that height before. The goal is to time things right so that they flower at about 3-4' with 10+ big healthy leaves (they have about 10 right now).
I'm hoping to cheat and build some monstrously big greenhouses next year (30' tall?) that'll provide a permanent home for the tall nanners. So even if I don't get satisfactory fruit via my short-term methods, I should at least have a lot of big healthy plants with enormous corms that I can use to stock the new greenhouses/botanical gardens.
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Set out runnin', but I'll take my time; a friend of bananas is a friend of mine.
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