So I went and checked on the bananas today. We are still having 80+° days but the nights are getting chilly. Friday and Saturday are really our last decent days at about 65°/62° but the nights are already bouncing around in the 40s and 50s.
They’re a little bigger but they have a ways to go. I poked one through an existing hole. I’m going to hope they round out a bit more even though it’s cool out. I will pull them before it freezes, put them in my garage and hope they ripen AND that we like them!Picture from last week. You can see they are more blocky and narrow, at this stage. But not by a whole lot.
Will these bananas fill out? I don’t know, but at least we haven’t frozen yet. I’m still having some stupid health problems, so I haven’t cut down the rest of the bananas and covered everything, but I’m expecting to start work on that soon.
My dog has been tearing around the yard after dark, after some varmint, and the only edible thing out there right now is the bananas. I’m pretty sure its a possum so I put some hardware cloth around the banana cluster and will be covering the top with something tomorrow.
The reason this looks smaller is I snapped off the flower.Different flower photos I took as I pulled it apart. People eat the flower parts but it’s a lot of work (for little reward) to make vegan pulled pork out of these. Honestly, I’m not vegan and I’d rather have real pulled pork. Kinda reminds me of cleaning artichokes, but I am 100% into eating those! BTW the little bananas at the base are not what people eat. They eat the inside of each flower and that’s a heck of a lot of work, plus they brown quickly like banana fruit does.How starving would you have to be to want to gather these and make something from them? The center of the main flower is also edible, and supposedly tastes like an artichoke heart. I might try that.
Fall and winter are my worst allergy times of the year. Pollen from cedar/juniper comes out with cold weather here, and floats in and covers everything. The more freezes we get the more pollen they release. Evil plants! So, I am hopped up on allergy medicine and hoping I don’t catch a cold or get cedar fever this year (yes, cedar fever is actually a thing and it’s miserable!)
We will probably freeze in another week, so those naners need to hurry up and fill out. We’ll see.
I’m going to be a lot more aggressive with the Kokopo banana’s fertilizer next year and it’s rootball should be bigger next year too. Hopefully that will spur earlier flowering. I’m still working on the big, standard sized bananas. Although, I don’t know how much bigger they can possibly get!
That’s a 6 foot privacy fence back there. These guys are huge this year and I’m a little nervous to get my pole saw out and start cutting them down. They are very, very heavy as they’re about 90% water. I’m not into risky tree felling, I slice sections off until I get to ground level. But, this year they are super tall so I’m slightly concerned. I always cut them down at the end of the year, because: I cover the bed with a plastic tarp to keep the rootballs safe from a freeze. It’s a lot of work to grow tropical, fruiting bananas in zone 9a. But, I’m doing it!Here’s my garden cart full of two bales of heavily compacted straw from tractor supply. That’s my fig tree above them. These bales weigh about 50lbs a piece. About half of one bale will go over the bananas. The others will go over my other raised beds to retain water and build soil.
See you out in the garden to sample our bananas!
Crazy Green Thumbs
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This is the frustrating part. Because they are tropical, they do not know what seasons are. They bloom so randomly. If they happen to bloom early, they have time to finish fruiting. If they bloom late, the fruit is still trying to ripen into autumn. I sort of wonder what ratio of fruit actually finishes. I suspect that many or most of us do not care, since we continue to grow them anyway.
Yes, this is a plant I keep trying to cast magic spells on. A little more nitrogen. A little bigger rootball. Still haven’t beat the fact that I am trying to get tropical fruit in a temperate zone! Nice to see you today! I always enjoy your comments.
Crazy Green Thumbs 
This is the frustrating part. Because they are tropical, they do not know what seasons are. They bloom so randomly. If they happen to bloom early, they have time to finish fruiting. If they bloom late, the fruit is still trying to ripen into autumn. I sort of wonder what ratio of fruit actually finishes. I suspect that many or most of us do not care, since we continue to grow them anyway.
Yes, this is a plant I keep trying to cast magic spells on. A little more nitrogen. A little bigger rootball. Still haven’t beat the fact that I am trying to get tropical fruit in a temperate zone! Nice to see you today! I always enjoy your comments.