Hi Everyone,
I just joined yesterday. A was selling excess pups to a guy named Tony (from San Diego) and he told me about the site. I'm not sure if he posts here though.
I've been growing bananas in coastal San Diego for about 4 years now and have harvested enough fruit that I have to admit our family of five can't eat it all. I am generally obsessed with tropical gardening, especially palms, orchids, and tropical fruits. My wife was the main drive for the tropical fruit and bananas, but I've gotten into it too over the years. I just wish I had more space.
I've been growing all of our bananas (and our whole garden for that matter) using organic fertilizers and no pesticides. One of the best things about bananas is that I don't think I've ever seen a pest insect on them. And I've been really surprised how well they do on organics since I thought they would probably need higher Nitrogen levels.
Our kids are totally spoiled with the fresh organic bananas we have most of the time. My youngest, when he was about 1 year old used to eat 7 or 8 bananas a day (smaller varieties). We ran out and my wife bought some bananas from the store because he liked bananas so much. Took one bite of the store banana and spit it out. That's about how I feel about store bananas now too. We never buy them anymore.
We're growing the following varieties and my impressions of them so far:
Manzano - probably my favorite fruit in terms of flavor
Mona Lisa - probably the best overall plant for speed, flavor and yield. I've harvested fruit in ~9 months from a small pup.
Goldfinger - almost as good a Mona Lisa. Fruit develops faster than the others after flowering.
Dwarf Namwah - very robust plant, fruit is a bit sweet for my taste, but OK. It's my wife's favorite
Ice Cream - Only harvested fruit 2 times. The first was horrible, the second was the best banana I've ever had in my life.
Brazilian - seems pretty hardy, and the tallest banana I have. Fruit is fine, but it doesn't make too much in my climate.
Williams - not sure if my plant is really williams, it's short and the bananas are good, doesn't produce that well though
Belle - very tall plant, great grower, good yield, fruit is pretty good too
Orinoco - another taller one. Very slow to fruit for me. My first harvest should be ready in a couple weeks from a pup I moved to a better spot about a two years ago.
White Iholena - Great looking plant, tall and colorful. Bananas are very different, but good. Orangish flesh. It's a bit more tender but does OK.
Red Iholena - Too tender for my climate. Does great in summer and then gets stunted in winter. Never a good fruit set, but the fruit is still pretty good.
Dwarf brazilian - Planted in a bad spot. Only one harvest, but it was good.
Rajapuri - Also in a bad spot...no fruit after 4 years!
Golden Pillow - Seems more tender than most. Suckers are much harder to propagate. Very pretty, huge leaves in summer. Fruit is OK, but I'm not sure up to full potential since it gets stunted in winter.
Siam ruby - only had it since last fall. So far so good, in the ground through winter. It suckers like crazy.
And I've killed:
Ele ele - only tried once. Never really got growing.
Ae Ae - Tried twice. The first one had several "accidents". The second one grew fast and big, then blew over in winter. 4 pups started, but then rotted in the middle of summer. Probably won't try again.
Popolou - Grew up and fruited once, but was clearly too tender for my climate. Pups never really got going again.
I'd like to try Pitogo and praying hands and am interested to hear what other varieties people really like.
I'm growing more than 100 species of palms, lots of orchids, bromeliads, and some interesting fruits...Mango, chemrimoya, lychee, jackfruit, star apple, rata, ice cream bean. The 8000 square foot lot is getting pretty full.
That's all for now.
Matt
