Some new updates! turns out, if you leave them to ripen on the plant, the peels will split, so it's best to harvest them once you start seeing a finger or two turn yellow. Flavorwise, it's exactly the same mentioned in the beginning in this thread: absolutely AMAZING!!!! Upon reflection, I don't think you'll always see black spots on the peel at peak ripeness, I think it depends if the banana had some blemishes to begin with. Those spots become more pronounced as the peel senesces. It seemed like there was one finger that had no spots whatsoever and when it was eaten, it was like being in banana heaven!
Some new photos of American Goldfinger, taken 8/5/17. See those 4 dark yellow fingers in the foreground? They're absolutely at the perfect stage! The finger in the background that's starting to turn yellow...that still needs approx. 2-4 days in my conditions before eating:
They definitely started to split, but in my family, these bananas get devoured before they have a chance to go bad:
This was taken literally minutes after harvesting. Looking back, it's best to not let so many fingers ripen to avoid the skin from splitting:
Significantly bigger fingers this time around, but only the first had had very full, plump bananas. Some hands just didn't fill in (see hands in the background) because of the cold killing off the leaves, poor, suboptimal weather for bananas, etc. I'm curious to see if the ones that didn't fill in taste the same or not as good as the ones completely filled in, to be continued:
