I live in southern california. I have been successful in receiving fruit
from orange, lemons and peaches trees, however, my banana tree is now 4
years old and has not given any fruit. I have fed and cared for this tree
and it has given small new trees on the side but noooooo bananas. Any
information is appreciated. Thanks.
On Fri, 26 Feb 1999 11:53:05 -0800, Walter W Lorente
wrote:
> my banana tree is now 4
> years old and has not given any fruit.[...] has given small new trees on
> the side but noooooo bananas.
Sounds like it should have fruited by now. Are you sure the banana is
the kind that bears fruit? Do you know where it came from? How big are
the suckers? Sometimes they come out before the tree flowers rather
than after.
--
Magda Plewinska mplewinska@mindspring.com
Miami, FL, USA
There is an innovative banana grower just north of Santa Barbara whose
name I cannot recall. I'm now 2000 miles from there so I could not
readily locate for you.
Maybe a 'bananas AND California' boolean search?
--
Sincerely,
David Dodge
ddhort@usa.net
David,
Last I heard that grower was out of business. I do not know if anyone has
resumed their work.
Don in Encinitas,CA
Has anyone heard that bananas are sterile plants unable to reproduce on
their own? They are thinking now to save the banana from eventual extinction
due to lack of genetic diversity they will have to GM them to keep the specie
going. Since they will still be sterile they will not be able to go wild like
corn. It seems to me that if this were possible then they could also have done
that with corn and the big M would be chastised for neglecting that to allow
for wild crops so they could sue people. They are making millions in the court
room putting little people out of business because the little guy can't afford
to fight a hard enough battle to win.
In a message dated 2/5/05 2:17:50 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jallan6977@EARTHLINK.NET writes:
<< Has anyone heard that bananas are sterile plants unable to reproduce on
their own? They are thinking now to save the banana from eventual extinction
due to lack of genetic diversity they will have to GM them to keep the specie
going. Since they will still be sterile they will not be able to go wild
like
corn. It seems to me that if this were possible then they could also have
done
that with corn and the big M would be chastised for neglecting that to allow
for wild crops so they could sue people. They are making millions in the
court
room putting little people out of business because the little guy can't
afford
to fight a hard enough battle to win.
Nope, no problem. Please read this site:
http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp
Mary Ann
That figures and I fell for it. I looked for the source of my info but
couldn't find it.
I liked the site and especially the paragraph where mention "increasing
organic" methods of raising them. I saw no mention that the plant only grows
fruit once in it's lifetime so plants are always being set out so there is a
constant crop. That might be hipe also.
James Allan wrote:
A few points about bananas, some of which seem to be bit garbled or just
unclear in the article.
I think the first one to make is that _all_ named cultivated varieties
of plants whether sterile or fertile are unique individuals, which
either arose to start with from some random or planned genetic union or
from a mutation and which proved to give them special advantages worth
preserving. In the case of perennial plants these can continue to be
reproduced exactly by vegetative means such as cuttings or tubers and so
keep their special character. With annual crops which can only be grown
from seed there has to be a compromise where a true breeding strain has
to be selected by filtering through several generations of selecting and
rouging non-conforming individuals and subsequently maintained from
then on by similar filtering in each generation.
However with bananas we are definitely dealing with perennials so that
each unique variety remains distinct because it is only reproduced
vegetatively and is in other words part of a separate clone. Moreover
many such clones are remarkably long-lived. An example would be some
heritage apple varieties which have been in existence over 300 years
without losing their vigour and I suspect bananas are no different.
Though this article starts with foreboding about the survival of the
edible banana it seems to be a big over-reaction to the threat which in
any case appears to involve not to the entire range of varieties grown
but just one in particular.
As to the article's making much of the inability of the banana to change
because of its sterility, one has to wonder how the first edible bananas
arose from their inedible but very fertile cousin with its fruit having
little pulp and instead multitudes of large hard black seeds.
If there was only one variety of cultivated banana one might think it
was the result of either a once-only mutation or alternatively a cross
between two wild varieties which somehow induced sterility in the
offspring. However there are not just one or two but the article claims
no less than 300 distinct varieties of edible bananas, and not just the
sweet sort we are used to buying, some for instance which are starchy
and only good when cooked and one at least which is green skinned when
ripe, the skin never turning yellow, and even one big chap from Uganda
with a red-brown skin and a rich pinkish-yellow flesh. All this does
suggest that at one time there was plenty of genetic variation taking
place and of course some seed production at least as well.
As a matter of fact, when I was working in the lab in Kenya we heard
that the College of Tropical Agriculture in Trinidad was hoping to breed
new bananas and they put out an SOS for seed. According to their
information it seemed cultivated bananas are not wholly sterile but a
very occasional individual may have one or two of the typical big black
fruits embedded in the sweet pulp. In fact they actually offered a
sizeable cash award for anybody who could find and send them one. Alas,
though I have looked ever since I have never found such a seed, but I
still live in some hope
Another possibility of course is that new varieties have arisen through
mutation. The article makes a rather confusing statement saying first
that bananas are sterile _mutants_ and then a bit further on talks of
the plant's inability to mutate because of being sterile. This is of
course a non-sequiter as the absence of genetic reproduction, while it
may somewhat limit the rate of mutation, certainly does not prevent it
altogether. You can sometimes see changes of this sort in all kinds of
different plants. For instance my friend had a yellow chrysanthemum
which produced an inflorescence where there had obviously been a
mutation in one sector so that some flowers were bright yellow like the
rest of the plant and some rose pink or even parti-coloured. If she had
cared to she could most likely got a cutting from the pink-flowered part
and made herself a new colour variety (and for someone in a lab with
access to tissue culture facilities the possibility of using the small
amount of changed cells to grow a new plant would of course be greatly
enhanced)..
As to how bananas grow, though the tall stems bearing the bunches are
sometimes called "palms", they are not trees at all but shoots on
gigantic herbaceous plants which grow from a suckering rhizome quite
similar to that found in Canna plants or some ornamental gingers, but a
whole lot bigger. As on any herbaceous perennial these flowering shoots
only last one season which with bananas involves producing and
nourishing a bunch of fruit, after which each shoot dies and must be cut
down. Under peasant cultivation the main part of the plant is left in
the ground and new shoots then form so the plants in time tend to
become dense clumps..They certainly don't replant after each bunch has
been harvested but the clumps may stay in place for years.
I have never seen banana growing in commercial plantations so I do not
know if they let them spread like this or replant frequently from
single suckers.
Lie you Jim I am delighted to see the common sense of organic practices
being more frequently used. Our local peasant cultivators in Kenya I
remember always chopped up the old stem and laid it around the new
shoots to provide some useful compost for the new generation.
Moira
--
Tony & Moira Ryan,
Wainuiomata, North Island, NZ.
Want to know all about NZ? See the world's first National On-line
Encyclopedia!
Mike, years ago I tried bananas but I didn't know anything about them. We
got one large bunch off them and then they just pooped out. I went to your
"my first bananas" link, and learned I probably did all the wrong things!!
I was very excited, I may try again. It would be a lot easier for us here
as we are so temperate in climate (although you wouldn't know it this
morning at 41 degrees). I enjoy reading about your neat greenhouse very
much. Its too bad that we couldn't have a pit greenhouse here without goin=
g
to a really big deal to control the water. We are really enjoying our
greenhouse this winter and know we are going to only use it more and more.
I am eagerly awaiting the little squashes to get big enough for cooking
now.
We decided to do the front greenhouse, the one attached to the house this
summer we have had so much success with the renovation of the big
greenhouse. Its got citrus trees in it, and we think we can put potted
tomatoes, peppers and maybe cucumbers for winter use in it as well as a
couple of eggplants. I cut the citrus back severely a couple of weeks ago
since they had went so rampant after Rita. They are just covered with new
growth and blooms--like a really great re-jubilation! Its very
encouraging. I wish we had done all this years ago.
Margrett
***************************
http://www.RunningMoonFarm.com
****************************
Southwest Louisiana
Gulf Coast Sheep
***************************
I really hope you get it to work this time around. That you got a bunch
of bananas is a very good thing. Now, when that stem produces the
bananas, it dies back to the ground, so don't worry about that. By then
you should have keiki already shooting up to replace it. Try to keep it
to about three or four per banana plant - main stem and replacement
stems. That way you can rotate them as they produce, but not have so
many that more energy is going to stem production than nanner
production. Extras can be culled out by breaking them off at the ground
or you can dig and cut them from the corm to sell or trade. If it's in a
container, it'll only produce a few keiki anyway since it has no room to
spread and produce more.
I'll cover some overwintering techniques in a later post that may help
in preserving these stems for us temperate folks. There are a few, from
misting overnight using well water, to wrapping, to digging up and
stuffing under crawl-space of your home. http://www.bananas.org/ has an
account of crawl-space technique that I find inspiring. I won't be able
to make that work in Zone 8, unfortunately - winters are just too warm.
Zone 7 is perfect for that tho, or even further north, so long as you
can maintain a crawl-space (or other storage) temperature above freezing
but below 55F all winter long.
You probably don't have to worry much about that in your neck of the
woods. I know a fella who lives in that area who uses well-water misting
to protect his bananas tho - which has worked marvelously except for
this last very hard freeze that caused a few to topple due to
ice-buildup. He'll probably trim his stems next Fall to shorten them and
make for a lower center of gravity before doing that method again,
methinks.
Me? I just greenhouse mine. But I have some that'll get very tall soon -
like the Saba, so it won't be long before I'm trying different
over-wintering techniques to try to keep the stem alive over the winter
- you won't get fruit unless a stem matures enough to do so.
A pit greenhouse doesn't necessarily have to be a pit. You can easily
build a structure then berm soil up instead. Or use a thick earth-mass
promoting wall like rammed earth or similar. Probably too wet for
straw-bale construction there tho. Having a greenhouse attached to your
home is wonderful - I wish my wife would let me do that with ours. Sigh.
Be well,
Mike
--
Zone 8, Texas
http://www.taroandti.com/ Exotic Plants and More...
http://www.mjv.com/ Home...
Margrett Stretton wrote:
> Mike, years ago I tried bananas but I didn't know anything about them. We
> got one large bunch off them and then they just pooped out. I went to you=
r
> "my first bananas" link, and learned I probably did all the wrong things!=
!
> I was very excited, I may try again. It would be a lot easier for us here
> as we are so temperate in climate (although you wouldn't know it this
> morning at 41 degrees). I enjoy reading about your neat greenhouse very
> much. Its too bad that we couldn't have a pit greenhouse here without goi=
ng
> to a really big deal to control the water. We are really enjoying our
> greenhouse this winter and know we are going to only use it more and more=
.
__._,_.___
Messages in this topic
cElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEbXNnSWQDODc3OARzZWMDZnRyBHNsawN2dHBjBHN0aW1lAzEyMDQ2NDE=
yOTUEdHBjSWQDODc3Nw--> (2) Reply (via web post)
kAzQyMDE3NQRncnBzcElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEbXNnSWQDODc3OARzZWMDZnRyBHNsawNycGx5BH=
N0aW1lAzEyMDQ2NDEyOTU-?act=3Dreply&messageNum=3D8778> | Start a new topic <=
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenhouseGardening/post;_ylc=3DX3oDMTJkcDA4Z=
TVhBF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzQyMDE3NQRncnBzcElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEc2VjA2Z0cgRz=
bGsDbnRwYwRzdGltZQMxMjA0NjQxMjk1>
Messages
Ec2VjA2Z0cgRzbGsDbXNncwRzdGltZQMxMjA0NjQxMjk1> | Files
BGdycElkAzQyMDE3NQRncnBzcElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEc2VjA2Z0cgRzbGsDZmlsZXMEc3RpbWU=
DMTIwNDY0MTI5NQ--> | Photos
lkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEc2VjA2Z0cgRzbGsDcGhvdARzdGltZQMxMjA0NjQxMjk1> | Links
1BF9TAzk3MzU5NzE0BGdycElkAzQyMDE3NQRncnBzcElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEc2VjA2Z0cgRzbG=
sDbGlua3MEc3RpbWUDMTIwNDY0MTI5NQ--> | Calendar
ElkAzQyMDE3NQRncnBzcElkAzE3MDUwNDE5NDIEc2VjA2Z0cgRzbGsDY2FsBHN0aW1lAzEyMDQ2=
NDEyOTU->
