FlytrapCare Carnivorous Plant Forums

I'll take help from anyone, I just know he grows bananas here. I bought a Dwarf Cavendish banana tree about a month ago. It didn't really do anything for a few weeks until I moved it into my green house. Then it finally grew a new leaf. It got really warm so I took it back out of the green house and the leaves got pretty shredded in the wind. I just finally transplanted it out of it's tiny pot into a big half whiskey barrel, but it's looking pretty crappy. It was looking alright until a few days ago. Did I just wait too long to transplant it, is it the cool temps, the wind, over or under watered (the soil's pretty wet right now from watering after the transplant)? Will it be ok once it warms up or does it have a problem?

It actually looks pretty good...
It is normal for them to look horrible after the wind.
My bananas don't look any worse than yours right now.

What's in the soil mix?
You should try to keep water from sitting around the roots for extended periods of time.

Otherwise, I'd move it outside now.
It will look bad for a couple weeks, but it will grow much faster out there now that it is warmer...

As long as it gets warmth, sunlight, fertilizer, and water it should be fine.

P.S. Because it is in a pot, you might want to bring it inside if a big storm (like the one yesterday evening) is coming through. It doesn't matter as much if it is in the ground, but strong winds can knock down potted ones.

P.P.S. Congrats on super user!

Hope I helped!

It is very normal to see the bananas with shreded leaves, it is no problem (only for sight) all the plants we grow here are like that, and even worse because Mycospharella fijiensis (black sigatoka) is in every single plant of the country, and all of them grow very nice and tall.
Of course we do not use peat and use normal soil (your soil seems peat to me), or lombricompost is a really good soil for them. The pot should be even bigger, so you may have bananas. They grow here from even 10ºC to more than 35ºC in the lower places.

Thanks guys. I was more concerned about the droopiness than the tears but it's doing ok I think. I have it outside now. I had been moving it in on cold nights cause it was killing the leaves. A lot of the pups' leaves have black spots on them but I'm hoping that's from the cold a couple weeks ago. It's just in miracle grow potting mix with a lot of perlite added in and a little bit of wood mulch. I think it actually could've been a little airier than it turned out. Coline, are you saying it won't be able to produce fruit in this pot? I don't know if I can afford a bigger one right now. It is a dwarf cavendish, at least.

They had these really awesome looking red leafed ones (I forget what they were) when I got this, but they were full sized and I didn't have anywhere to plant them. Speaking of having them planted in the ground, do you always use that greenhouse built around yours in the winter, bananaman? It seems like our winters would be too harsh for them.

Yes, it may produce some fruit, but it will quickly outgrow the pot, because bananas reproduce around the mother plant really quickly, so the best would be a little greenhouse around it and planting it on the very soil.

The minimum for producing fruit in a pot is 25 gallons or so, but they usually need a bigger pot.

Dwarf cavendish will get an 6- 8 foot or so psudeostem before fruiting. It may not seem dwarf to have a plant totaling 14 feet tall, but it is for a banana, compared to some like Saba that can get 40 foot tall psudeostems that are 4 feet in diameter.

I only put up the greenhouse thing this one time, as there wasn't room in my garage for the bananas.

Normally, I'd dig them up and put them in a garage bareroot.

You can dig it up and put it in a pot, as dwarf cavendish does not store well bareroot.
They multiply fast. My rajapuri mat, just entering its 3rd year is already 4 feet in diameter. It's largest psudeostem will likely fruit in a few weeks, as it is the same height and a larger girth than the one that fruted over winter. It has a wide base with a sudden constriction over it, which is a sign of a growing flower.

One of my Musella lasiocarpa, an ornamental banana, was a pup last year, and now is a mat 5 feet in diameter, with 20 or more psudeostems.

The base of the biggest psudeostem will probably get to 10 inches or so in diameter before it fruits. Multiply that by 15 or so to realize how wide a banana mat can get.

Dwarf cavendish isn't the best choice for out area, if you want fruit, as it does not store well over winter.

The ones that do well here are Rajapuri, Dwarf and Tall Orinoco, Dwarf and Tall Namwah, and the American version of Ice Cream, which isn't the real one.
Those store well over winter, so we can get fruit from them.
Our growing season is long enough to get lots of flowers, but they always flower in November or so, so we don't get fruit unless we can preserve the psudeostem over winter, instead of letting it die back.

Dwarf cavendish dies back at 30 degrees or so, but the ones I listed above don't die back until 27 degrees or so.

Hope I helped!

Oh, about banana sizes and shapes, I have gone to Corbana's banana germoplasm bank, and saw more than 200 banana variants and crosses made, just to example this:

Dwarf cavendish will get an 6- 8 foot or so psudeostem before fruiting. It may not seem dwarf to have a plant totaling 14 feet tall, but it is for a banana, compared to some like Saba that can get 40 foot tall psudeostems that are 4 feet in diameter.

I add this photos. of both the tallest and smallest ones I have the photos of.






Hope it helps in the view of the real size of these plants

Have you seen the picture of the Saba banana with a person trying to reach around the psudeostem?

I know for a fact that in the US, this variety gets 30 feet tall.

And there is also the variety Truly Tiny that fruits at 12 inches of psudeostem.
Granted, it is very difficult to fruit, but it has been done.

Well, never have seen them, the thickest ones are the ones that I saw were like the width of a garbage bin, not very tall, surely not 30ft, those here maybe were 15-20ft, I'm not so good at measuring, but they were almost twice as big as the big "guineo" plants we grow normally for eating the green bananas.
I've heard from the people working in Corbana that they sometimes get plants that fruit when being very small, but they discard them because the fruit brings them down due to the weight!