I love growing bananas! I have 16 varieties, including dwarf cavendish. Each mother plant should only have 2-3 pups and that’s when they’re in the ground. Your best bet is to have them in the ground, but if you need to do containers, it’s best if you remove them all so the mother doesn’t have competition. That’s if you wanna speed up the fruiting timeline, otherwise I leave them together. Another thing that will help stimulate them to flower is to prune the leaves. I only leave 3-4 leaves on mine at a time during the warm weather. Seems like as soon as I prune them down to four leaves, they start pushing flowers. Compost tea, worm castings, plenty of fertilizer, and LOTS of water, and your bananas will come! There’s nothing better than eating fresh bananas you picked off the stalk in your own backyard! I’m not sure if you said in your video where you are, but there’s ways to overwinter banana plants in the ground if you’re in cold weather places. The Millennial Gardner has a great series about it, and he grows them in North Carolina. Good luck!
you might be able to get them to produce if you separated all the large plants into their own pots and give them plenty of room. Bring them inside in late fall, or wrap them, don’t cut them back.
Thanks for watching a commenting! I think I am going to try separating them. I have not done it before (only ever separated palm tree pups), so I will have a little learning to do first.
@@craigweinzapfel I’d wait until your temps are not blazing hot as they go through a little stress as it is. Use a sharp, clean (with alcohol) tool. Remove the whole clump from the pot. It tight and rootbound, hose it down until it’s looser. Cut your pups away either midway between its trunk and the mother trunk, or closer to the mother trunk to ensure you have plenty of the mother corm and roots for each pup. Return mother to one per pot. Small intact pups with corm and roots can be planted together in a pot until spring. Cut all but 2 pup leaves and use to mulch on top of soil. Use well draining soil, for pots I like cactus and palm soil with at least 1/3 extra perlite added. If you have a bit of blood,eat,or potash add a couple tablespoons mixed in, water and place all the pots in outside shady area for about a week or until a new leaf emerges. From now on, you can keep them outdoors until night temps turn 45 or below, then wrap well and keep on protected southwest area of yard near house, or place in greenhouse or in the home until spring. The best pups to preserve are the sword suckers instead of water suckers. Ie., sword suckers early leaves are very narrow and swordlike. Water suckers grow slower and early leaves are large and full to start with. Hope this helps!
At this point your banana trees are decorative ( maybe intentional or accidental ) plants as they are growing as a family or clusters . Separating them allows/encourages fruiting due energy concentration/control. Great video.
Thank you for watching and commenting. I will probably give them the winter inside under lights to see if any fruiting occurrs. If not, I'll separate them and see if fruiting can still occur.
I am not sure how to accomplish that. My bananas are of a dwarf variety so I did not have to do any extra work to accomplish that. What variety of banana do you have?
You can’t dwarf a banana plant, but if you want to keep it small, water it like you would other non-fruiting plants. Even though it’s difficult to kill a banana plant by over watering, they’re also pretty drought tolerant. They won’t necessarily die if you don’t water them as much as they’d like (I water my container bananas every day, and in heat waves, twice a day), but they won’t grow very tall, even if they’re a non-dwarf variety. It should be understood that by keeping it small, it won’t produce fruit, bc it’s not a true dwarf, it’s just being kept small.
I want to give this a try. Every time I delay watering mine an extra day or so, I get nervous when I see the leaves fold down in stress and heavy water them.
You might be giving them too much love Craig
Haha, I wish they would show the love back as bananas!
I love growing bananas! I have 16 varieties, including dwarf cavendish. Each mother plant should only have 2-3 pups and that’s when they’re in the ground. Your best bet is to have them in the ground, but if you need to do containers, it’s best if you remove them all so the mother doesn’t have competition. That’s if you wanna speed up the fruiting timeline, otherwise I leave them together. Another thing that will help stimulate them to flower is to prune the leaves. I only leave 3-4 leaves on mine at a time during the warm weather. Seems like as soon as I prune them down to four leaves, they start pushing flowers. Compost tea, worm castings, plenty of fertilizer, and LOTS of water, and your bananas will come! There’s nothing better than eating fresh bananas you picked off the stalk in your own backyard! I’m not sure if you said in your video where you are, but there’s ways to overwinter banana plants in the ground if you’re in cold weather places. The Millennial Gardner has a great series about it, and he grows them in North Carolina. Good luck!
Excellent feedback.
As long as a mother plant has a pup it will not bloom. All the energy goes to the pup.
Thanks for the feedback. I have them all moved inside now and will separate them soon. I am ready for some bananas!
Nice growin, I didnt think they got that tall. Which NPK fert do you use?
Thank you! I have enough using high nitrogen in the spring and switch to a balance for the rest of the summer.
you might be able to get them to produce if you separated all the large plants into their own pots and give them plenty of room. Bring them inside in late fall, or wrap them, don’t cut them back.
Thanks for watching a commenting!
I think I am going to try separating them. I have not done it before (only ever separated palm tree pups), so I will have a little learning to do first.
@@craigweinzapfel I’d wait until your temps are not blazing hot as they go through a little stress as it is. Use a sharp, clean (with alcohol) tool. Remove the whole clump from the pot. It tight and rootbound, hose it down until it’s looser. Cut your pups away either midway between its trunk and the mother trunk, or closer to the mother trunk to ensure you have plenty of the mother corm and roots for each pup. Return mother to one per pot. Small intact pups with corm and roots can be planted together in a pot until spring. Cut all but 2 pup leaves and use to mulch on top of soil. Use well draining soil, for pots I like cactus and palm soil with at least 1/3 extra perlite added. If you have a bit of blood,eat,or potash add a couple tablespoons mixed in, water and place all the pots in outside shady area for about a week or until a new leaf emerges. From now on, you can keep them outdoors until night temps turn 45 or below, then wrap well and keep on protected southwest area of yard near house, or place in greenhouse or in the home until spring. The best pups to preserve are the sword suckers instead of water suckers. Ie., sword suckers early leaves are very narrow and swordlike. Water suckers grow slower and early leaves are large and full to start with. Hope this helps!
Thank you for the great detail. I am going to give it a try on one of my trees in September. If I am successful, I will repeat on the others.
At this point your banana trees are decorative ( maybe intentional or accidental ) plants as they are growing as a family or clusters . Separating them allows/encourages fruiting due energy concentration/control. Great video.
Thank you for watching and commenting. I will probably give them the winter inside under lights to see if any fruiting occurrs. If not, I'll separate them and see if fruiting can still occur.
Any know how to dwarf my banana plant.???
I am not sure how to accomplish that. My bananas are of a dwarf variety so I did not have to do any extra work to accomplish that. What variety of banana do you have?
You can’t dwarf a banana plant, but if you want to keep it small, water it like you would other non-fruiting plants. Even though it’s difficult to kill a banana plant by over watering, they’re also pretty drought tolerant. They won’t necessarily die if you don’t water them as much as they’d like (I water my container bananas every day, and in heat waves, twice a day), but they won’t grow very tall, even if they’re a non-dwarf variety. It should be understood that by keeping it small, it won’t produce fruit, bc it’s not a true dwarf, it’s just being kept small.
I want to give this a try. Every time I delay watering mine an extra day or so, I get nervous when I see the leaves fold down in stress and heavy water them.