hi guys, first timer here and need some help identifying my new baby please.
I stumbled onto this site as i am trying to identify which species of banana was sold to me at the local nursery. Im based in j'burg south africa and generally bananas are cultivated in the much more northern regions of the country and the lowveld, so up here on the highveld of gauteng the nursery staff has no clue. they hardly speak english and only know one species: banana yes yes banana (wish i could do the zulu accent for you)
In fact i was lucky to find one as i had spent days driving around town visiting all the local nurseries and finally found this baby - check out the pics :-)
it's growing nicely alongside my litchies and avocado on the patio, only receives sun for half the day though (afternoons) but seems to not mind. I'll be keeping it potted so as to move it indoors come winter, where average minimums drop to 37* farenheit. At the moment it's nice and warm summertime averaging 84* during the day and dropping to 60*. So naturally i'm concerned that it may grow too big to move into the house but still i would like to try and make it fruit. However my first objective is to make one become many. Would like to cover my pool area with many many big banana 'trees'.
From the nursery bag i potted it with good draining potting mix claiming to have enough nutrients already added to last 5 months as well as coco peat for drainage and disease resistance. the pot size is probably around 7 gallons. Question: should i be adding any nutrients from the start, if so which NPK ratios are recommended, and how often should i be adding i.e. every watering or maybe once a month? Or can i trust that the soil it came in and the potting mix i got really does contain enough nutrients for the first few months, and ading more may be harmful?
And is water spraying on the leaves recommended? Average humidity hoverers around 50% up here during summer so i figured its not really necessary.
thanks guys super site by the way!
