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Originally Posted by hersirsmiley
Hi my nickname is smiley,
I'm into growing edible plants and over the past year I've begun growing citrus plants. I found this site from a suggestion of someone on my citrus forum that i belong to. I don't have any bananas currently, and I was wondering what would be an easy type of banana to grow in a container in northern ohio, i would like this banana not to need giant amounts of space and be able to produce edible fruit to go with my whole edible gardening approach. Also i was wondering once i have a suggestion on a good type to grow what way should i go about trying to get my banana? barerooted, croms, or seeds? i have a fishtank i've converted into a minigreenhouse that i can use to germinate seeds but i hear that seeds take longer to make it to fruiting age.
hurray for my first post!  |
Welcome Smiley, Well first off you've found a GREAT place for info! Well you mention growing from seeds, but unfortunately if you grow them from seeds, you'll get a seeded fruit, which while most I believe are edible and not harmful, the seeds could potentially break a tooth.
Musa basjoo is a very cold hardy banana, but not very good to taste (or not edible) I believe. I don't have any experience with that one myself as it doesn't apeal to me. California Gold is an excellent cold hardy species, but very rare and expensive when you can find it (basically I believe mainly only members here have them, and arn't very willing to sell too many, I for one don't have this variety). The last one sold on e-bay for over $100. Anything else would be good, but must be brough indoors or into a green house over the winter or placed into dormancy in a garage, in a basement or under your home. Ice Cream, Pisang Ceylons, and Rajapuri are amoung the top tasting bananas, but get very tall, but don't need that much space once tall, yet having to dig them up to over winter might be another issue. So hydro might be right, you might want to stick with a dwarf cavendish, which you can pick up at Walmart. I'm in a warm climate 80-90% of the year, so don't have the experiance of over wintering bananas as someone further north would. Good luck on your exploration of deciding on a species!