Just bananas

[Darren Wright]

So my wife’s grandpa was given a banana plant several years ago, he planted it on the side of the house along with a couple of other tropicals.

Every year they get cut off about 6” from the ground and covered with mulch. I uncovered them at the end of April.

I was watering them tonight, the taller one is about 9’ -10’ tall, 9 weeks later.


I notice one actually has a bloom this year, so curious if we’ll see any bananas or not.

 

[Ryan Mooney]

There are some remarkably cold hardy banana's.. A house down the street a ways even has one that they've managed to grow way up here.

Most of them don't produce much for edible banana's, although we found one variety (and some derivatives thereof) Ice Cream Banana that's SUPPOSED to .. but haven't tried it.

It'll be super interesting to see if this one does anything!

You can also use the banana leaves to wrap up hunks of beast for pit roasting (i.e. kalua pork)

Other tropicals that are fun to grow over the summer are ginger and tumeric (which are closely related). I picked up "starts" from the local grocery store and put them in some rich dirt. The Tumeric gets nice big wide tropical looking leaves. My season is usually to short for the ginger to flower but still makes a nice tall pretty leafed plant.

I also found some cold hardy (supposedly to high zone 6.. we're going to test that theory out hah) pomegranates. Last year I got 2 each of:

• Afganski Russian Pomegranate
• Sirenevyi Pomegranate
• Salavatski Russian Pomegranate

from https://wellspringgardens.com/ which was one of the few places that seemed to have and ship them (there are other cold hardy varieties as well, this LOOKED like one of the less dodgy places to order from.. plants all arrived alive, quite small, but alive anyway). So far all six are alive and well still in medium sized pots. My plan is to grow them up this year then propagate out and then see how they do.

 

[Dave Hoskins]

That is amazing! A neighbor when I was a little kid had a banana tree. Neat looking. And, fresh bananas! That tree put out a lot of bananas. Cool!

 

[Vaughn McMillan]

Man, that's a fast-growing plant!

There are some remarkably cold hardy banana's.. A house down the street a ways even has one that they've managed to grow way up here.

Thinking of cold-hardy plants reminds me of when I was a kid living in Los Alamos NM. Someone decided it'd be a good idea to plant a palm tree at the public golf course. Keep in mind Los Alamos is at about 7300 feet (2225 meters) in elevation and gets real snow and hard freezes. That poor tree lasted less than a year.

 

[Darren Wright]

The bud is confirmed, seeing some petals inside. Really looking forward to seeing this blossom.

 

[Ted Calver]

My Vietnamese neighbors planted a few next to my fence a few years ago. The plants form a colony, die back in the winter (zone 7b), and easily hit 10’ the following year. In the fall, before any frost, they harvest the leaves to use in the preparation of Vietnamese dishes.

When I expressed an interest, they gifted me two small plants. Fast growing and pleasantly tropical. Here they are as of today.


Haven’t seen any bananas from them yet.