Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Today's picture. Kind of a hot day, so the leaves were folded. I just repotted it into this pot a couple of days ago, because everything was getting root-bound.

Oh...lol...the price tag is from whatever was in that pot to begin with (no idea what it was: "Tropical Foliage")!

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Very nice...

Is that an ensete glaucum I see in the background?

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Yes, lol! Good eye. I was thinking of planting it yesterday, but planted a camellia instead. I dug up my Musa 'Royal Purple', only to discover that voles were the cause of its puny existence this year (it never grew, and only had two small roots on the corm). The Ensete is in a ridiculously small pot for its size, lol, but I just don't have anywhere to plant it yet. My soil is pathetic here, and I'm saving up for a dumptruck load of topsoil before planting anything else.

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Looking Great Frank!
The E.glaucum looks good from here, and so does that beauty on the far right!
Thanks for the updated pics. If you have any extra seedlings that decide to sprout that you don't want, and are not already spoken for, please think of me ;) Hopefully I will already have some of mine sprout, but just in case.

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Ha! I have been wanting one but I will have to wait till next year. And the moles here have been heck on my plants... I finally just potted most of them up and put the pots in the ground.

I need to get a truck load of soil too (if I could get rid of the under ground rodents)... nothing but extremely fine sand 'round here.

-James-

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Bigdog- Why is your soil so bad? I have really sandy soil here, and i think its crap, but things still grow decent (the trees around here are huge...lots of maples and oaks). How has your fruiting gone this year? Are you sick of banana splits yet? :)

Re: M. sikki 'Darjeeling Giant'
 

Frank, my soil is fine for growing things like maples and oaks, redbuds, dogwwods, azaleas, rhodos, etc. However, it is just so acidic (pH=5.1) that I get lots of nutrient deficiencies showing up in my bananas and other cultivated plants. The natives do fine! The low pH causes many nutrients to be plant-unavailable, so I have to add lots of lime. That, plus the soil is heavy clay full of rocks in the backyard. the front yard was obviously scraped clean of any topsoil, a thick layer of gravel laid down, followed by a very thin layer of heavy clay garbage. I just can't work with it, so I'm going with raised beds next year. Many of my bananas have severely twisted leaves because of some kind of deficiency, haven't figured out what though quite yet. Also, there's just not much organic matter in the soil, hence a lack of basic plant nutrients. I need to amend the soil heavily with some good poop!

Some of the leaf issues I've seen: Musa cheesmani leaf doesn't unfurl properly, and is twisted all the way around:



Another banana, the so-called Musa itinerans 'Yunnan', has twisted the last two leaves around completely backwards!



Musa 'Helen's Hybrid' isn't immune either, as you can see on the last leaf on the pseudostem on the right:



I have four plants in various stages of blooming/fruiting, and may get 20 or so bananas out of the deal. Could be more, depending on if I use some protection on a couple of them in October/November.