Olaf,
When Tony and I first joined this site several years ago, root rot was the biggest problem we noticed among novice gardeners. Also, I noticed it among some of my customers who purchased bananas from me here in San Diego.
The main problem was with novice indoor gardeners. As you are no doubt aware, the humidity in a house is much lower than outdoors. This in turn causes the top layer of soil in a pot to dry out quickly. A novice gardener will notice this, and thinking the plant needs water will give the plant a drink. If they do this several times a week under the lower light input of indoors with a moisture retention soil, root rot is going to happen.
Now, since you are an experienced indoor gardener I doubt it will ever happen to you.
The folks from southern CA on this site will attest to 18 month maturation times. However, as Gabe pointed out 3 times in this paragraph, under tropical conditions that standard time is 9 months or less:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe15
That really depends on your growing conditions and most importantly, the variety. The wild Rhodochlamys species (like velutina and ornata) usually average about 5 months or so. The larger wild species will generally take about 12-18 months, however, in the perfect conditions 9 months is normal. Edible cultivars will usually also take about 12-18m months, even dwarf varieties, however, some of the taller ones like 'Saba' and the Reds (dwarf and tall 'Red') will easily take 2 years or more, especially the first time they fruit, but again, most of these (except the Reds) can fruit in 9 month under supreme conditons. 'Raja Puri' has been recored to fruit at 6 months, but usually take the normal 9-12. All of these times though are under the assumption that you can keep your bananas actively growing all year long without any longs breaks, this means basically the extreme Southern US, other tropical regions thru-out the world, or a heated greenhouse.
|
Southern CA does not fall into the category of "extreme southern US", our latitude is equal with the Carolinas and Georgia.
As for the chart from Biodiversity International, I recall it was the subject of discussion in a thread here -- and one of the remarkable things on the list was a banana that is named for the number of days it matures. I'm sure someone will dig it up sooner or later.