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Key's Banana Plant Adoption Thread

keybrdkid

keybrdkid

So I'm hesitant to do this, but since I have more spawn of banana plants than I probably can keep, I may need to give a few away. If I find this is either not legal or too inconvenient, I may discontinue this thread.
 
That being said, a slight disclaimer is the following:
 
1. ) I need to research what plants I can ship where. I think shipping to California may be a problem, but maybe not, for regulatory reasons. I'll have to look into that. I have received plants FROM California, at any rate.
2. ) Preferably tropical type climates
3. ) US only please for now
4. ) We may need to discuss shipping charges, but I need to look into costs more and such. Something reasonable may be necessary, since the plant would be free. Mind you, these are (hopefully) small off shoots that should grow bigger later.
 
Current availability:
 
3-4 small Grand Nain Bananas
1 Blue Java Banana
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Cultivars I have that are still growing or not producing enough off shoots to adopt:
 
FHIA 01 (Goldfinger) [just planted]
FHIA 17 (not a big offshoot producer so far)
Mysore (just planted)
Raja Puri (just planted)
Pisang Raja (just planted)  (need to find a replacement for this plant at some point in the future)
Zebrina (no shoots small enough to ship)
Jamaican Red (just planted)
Kru (just planted)
Red Iholene (just planted)
Pitogo (not yet planted, on order. Hopefully will be arriving soon)
Siam Ruby (not yet planted, on order. Hopefully will be arriving soon)
Praying Hands or Kandrian (not yet planted, on order. Hopefully will be arriving soon)  
 
Let me know if you are interested and your location. I'll see what I can look up in regards to that.
 
First come first serve.
 
I would be interested I grow some stuff indoors that are too tropical to put outdoors and then put them in a heated humid greenhouse in winter.

I'm in Nevada btw
 
oh my god yes.

i had 2 dwarf cavendish ... but they got killt by the person whom i entrusted their care...

i wanted the ice cream and apple cultivars initially... but i couldnt find them at the time. i think i ordered the cavendish in the dead of summer when folks are sold out or some such thing.

id like to hear your thoughts on dwarf varieties in general if you have the time... i like the idea of the sub 10' nanner trees in the back yard, but i generally loathe high maintenance landscaping.

these plants would be in houston texas... exceptionally warm and mild winters... rarelly freezing more than a few hours at a time.
 
Scuba_Steve said:
I would be interested as well in either or both of the avail plants.  Im right next to Savannah GA
Click to expand...
 
Scuba_Steve can you describe your potential growing conditions in winter? It takes about a year or so or more for the bananas to grow from the small plants to the larger fruit producing variety.
 
I live in South Florida so winter is not really a problem for me. Usually the temps dip in the 50-40s at the lowest. Lower than that I don't have much experience in what happens to them, but being tropical plants I'm not sure how well they'd do. Anything lower than 32 degrees might necessitate only certain of the hardier cultivars, most of which I probably don't own. I think some of those hardier cultivars can survive in the colder environments, but again not much experience on my end. If you are looking for plants of that type, I might be able to recommend a place to inquire about them.
 
 
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Ok so, if Nightshade takes one Grand Nain,
and Queequeg152 takes two (1x Grand Nain and 1x Blue Java)
and potentially Scuba Steve takes one if the growing conditions are right...
 
that leaves a few more adoptable grand Nains (hopefully). My Grand Nain decided to produce a whole family this year. lol. I don't know if they do that normally. But maybe they do.
 
 
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Edit:
 
My thoughts on dwarf bananas. I don't really have many, since I don't own any real dwarf varieties per say (at least, that I know of since a number of my plants are fresh in the ground small,) other than perhaps my grain nain-which is smaller than the others-but thick around the base.  I'm not including the Zebrina in this, since it is an ornamental and may not be all that good for eating-if at all. Zebrina is nice looking and red fruit, if nothing else. Not sure what you meant by high maintenance landscaping, but if I interpret that correctly, caring for bananas can be some work-but it is mostly fun and (to me) worth the effort. They seem to be mostly plug-and-play plants, just trim the dead leaves when needed, compost them when needed, mulch if necessary, fertilize, and water are the basics I find. Examples of more advanced care: as I was told: twisting off the dead flowers to prevent Cigar End rot in Grand Nains, digging up the offshoots to limit the number of Psuedostems (no more than 3-4 as I was told so as not to adversely affect fruit production.)
 
Edit: by twisting off the flower, I'm not referring to the larger main flower, but the smaller flowers the plant grows out of the individual hands as they emerge from the main flower.
 
on an unrelated note.
when i eat more than 1 or 2 nanners at a time, 90% of the time i get stupid heartburn. this is not my imagination. its fact based on years of observation on my part.

what say you folks? anyone else?
 
Maybe I get a little too cold on second thought.  I drop down into the 30s for a good 2 months at night.  I do have a small greenhouse, but I don't know if I will have room for trees in it.
 
queequeg152 I attempted to answer your question in the post above, didn't know if you saw.
 
I will be in touch with parties adopting plants shortly.
 
keybrdkid said:
queequeg152 I attempted to answer your question in the post above, didn't know if you saw.
 
I will be in touch with parties adopting plants shortly.
Click to expand...
cool thanks.

by high maintenance im referring to stuff like topiary and annual flower beds.where frequent attention is required to keep things looking and growing acceptably.

i like the idea of the short bananna trees because this would allow me to simply snatch off the old dead growth, and handle pruning with a step stool at most.
topiary stuff... like my dad had at one point around his place was ridiculous... trying to re start a gas bush thing trimmer on top of an 8ft ladder... granted i was alot shorter back then.
stuff like annual flower beds annoy myself as well... once you commit to a flower bed you basically have to keep buying plants from this and that nursury to keep things even... then some errant basket ball comes into the area and savagely crushes some geraniums to death and off you go again back to the nursery.

my understanding with bananna trees... is that you basically cut them back to what ever height you want after the first freez event.
that being the case i suppose any bananna plant can be kept to what ever height you desire?

is the grand nain cultivar especially large or tall?
 
queequeg152 said:
cool thanks.

by high maintenance im referring to stuff like topiary and annual flower beds.where frequent attention is required to keep things looking and growing acceptably.

i like the idea of the short bananna trees because this would allow me to simply snatch off the old dead growth, and handle pruning with a step stool at most.
topiary stuff... like my dad had at one point around his place was ridiculous... trying to re start a gas bush thing trimmer on top of an 8ft ladder... granted i was alot shorter back then.
stuff like annual flower beds annoy myself as well... once you commit to a flower bed you basically have to keep buying plants from this and that nursury to keep things even... then some errant basket ball comes into the area and savagely crushes some geraniums to death and off you go again back to the nursery.

my understanding with bananna trees... is that you basically cut them back to what ever height you want after the first freez event.
that being the case i suppose any bananna plant can be kept to what ever height you desire?

is the grand nain cultivar especially large or tall?
Click to expand...
 
On the subject of height, my Grand Nain is relatively short by comparison with my other plants. I'd need to get out a tape measure to tell you its height more definitively. Which I did, and it seems to be in the 7 ft range plus or minus.  The Blue Java is a bit larger and more vigorous than some of my other varieties-at least the varieties that are of sufficient height to be measured (some of my newer ones could be tall I don't know.) I'd put the Blue Java by estimation somewhere in the 13 ft. range, plus or minus.
 
I'm not sure about cutting banana plants back during freezes, since I don't live in an area that gets regular freezes. That may be a question for someone with more experience than I. Or you may also be able to find information online about that.  It may also depend on what cultivar you have, since I think some cultivars are more cold hardy than others.
 
Here are some photos, for those who are interested.
 
This is the flower of the Grand Nain as it began fruiting this year. This was actually the first time my Grand Nain put out a flower since I planted it. But I was initially having problems with this plant until I moved it around a bit. Seemed to like where it ended up better than where it started. Note: when the fruit began to reach maturing size, I noticed a problem with Cigar end rot. I am told that Grand Nain is a Cavendish subtype, which may be susceptible to this disease, but there may be a fix for that. Simply twist off the small flowers (not the larger flower) after they start to shrivel. There should be a bead of sap then at the spot where you twisted off the flower. THat should help prevent Cigar End Rot. If that doesn't work, I'm not sure what to tell you. Although, what I did this year was cut off the bananas with a pruning saw that seemed to be adversely affected. This left about half the bananas the plant started with, but that was better than nothing in my opinion.
 

 
Here are most of the bunches that I harvested this year. On the left, SH3640. Next to that, Blue Java. Next to that, Grand Nain (note the places where I cut off bananas.) On the far right is my first harvest of FHIA 17, which was not as large as I was expecting. Hopefully future harvests will increase in size.
 
 
Hybrid Mode 01 said:
That happens to my wife. If she eats a banana with even a hint of brown on it, she gets heartburn. She eats green bananas  :sick:  to avoid this.
Click to expand...
green nanners taste like crap though. like grass ... to me anyway.

i like em slightly over ripe... good and soft, when you start to see dots of brown or black on the peel.


@key
thanks for the rely. see your pm.
 
Of Course, nothing ever goes according to plan. haha. I had previously dug up a few Grand Nains and moved them to different locations for maintenance purposes, and had my eye on the Blue Java that produced an offshoot. I hadn't gotten around to digging that one up.
 
So I went out to photograph it since nightshade asked me for pictures of the Grand Nain plant offshoot I would send him, and lo and behold.. the Blue Java offshoot I dug up had no roots.  LOL.
 
That being said, I may leave the Blue Java in the ground for a bit, to see if it produces any roots. There may be one on the plant just starting. It otherwise looked healthy... maybe a few ants around the base. In this case, I think they were more interested in the main plant..maybe as a backbone for their colony. (I find ants and bananas plant bases go together in my area-not too big of a problem unless the plant dies unexpectedly..haha. Funny story there for another day.) 
 
Anyways... here are the photos:
 
Blue Java I dug up that surprised me by having no roots. I don't want to ship it until I know it will grow on its own. If it doesn't survive we may have to talk Queequeg152 about other options.
 

 
Here is a Grain Nain Offshoot photo.
 

 
Here is a second Grand Nain Plaint off shoot photo.
 

 
Here is a picture of my Grand Nain plant inching toward full height.
 

 
Here is a picture of some other banana plants in my back yard (Blue Java is probably the tallest one in this photo.) I can see I'm going to need to trim some dead leaves back.
 

 
Some new acquisitions that were just planted. From the left, Red Iholene (hiding by the bee plant I don't know the name of), FHIA 01 [Goldfinger], Mysore, and Raja Puri. Oh and a San Marzano Tomato plant. hehe.
 
 
I thought it was time for an update to this thread.
 
Current status: still working on the Blue Javas.
 
Since my last post, a few more Blue Java offshoots have appeared on the main plant. I might want to wait to see if they start producing real leaves before I put them up for adoption-but I can take requests. I think I have three Blue Java new offshoots that may or may not survive that could potentially be adopted. Not sure if its a good idea to cut offshoots off the plant while the plant is putting out a flower (see below,) but I can try if necessary. 
 
As eluded to above, my Blue Java also decided to put out another flower-so hopefully I'll have some Ice Cream bananas soon!
 

 
*Note* - If anyone wants to adopt a Grand Nain Banana with leaves, here is one of the plants that could be adopted
 

 
Here is a Blue Java banana offshoot
 

 
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Here are two more recent additions to my collection I hadn't photographed yet. Hopefully they are, in fact, what the seller I purchased them from labeled them as. crosses fingers. lol. If so, they were worth the investment to me.
 
a 'Kru' Banana? (hopefully will produce both pinkish and green fruit on the same plant of sorts-at least that's what the pictures I've seen seem to suggest.) I had at least one party identify this one for me, and they seemed to think it possibly wasn't a 'Kru'. But without a good point of reference(the fruit), I'm still hoping that it is what I was led to believe that it is.
 

 
A 'Jamaican Red' Banana. These will hopefully be the actual red color large banana that I was looking for.
 

 
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My ornamental 'Zebrina' recently flowered. Here is what the bananas it produced looked like.
 

 
P.S: If anyone out there can prove to me with their THP user ID in the photo that they have a real A'ea'e (Ae Ae) banana plant in their inventory, and could spare a non-tissue cultured pup (since I hear they don't keep the white variegation when put through tissue culture-correct me if I am wrong,) I would be interested in discussing a possible sale with you. I am aware that Ae Ae's are valuable, and depending on your location, might be interested. Would prefer I think after trying shipping myself, to see some leaves on the plant prior to purchase.
 
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