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Garden Clippings
Chiquita, eat your heart out
By RUTH DAVIES
Article published on Thursday, July 19, 2007 |
Yes, we have some bananas. Sweet, tasty bananas grow without much care in this area. They come in all sizes and flavors.
It’s nice to know that the cavemen had bananas around, although competition was probably tough to pick the fruit. Included in this family of musa acuminate or musa balbisiana, are plantains.
Sandy soil is just fine when planting; they do not like to be flooded, so be sure they’re on a slight slope. Full sun will produce a more prolific plant. The plant has a rhizome from which come fibrous roots.
They need to be fertilized nearly every other month; starting off with one-half pound of 6-2-12. Notice the high potash number. As the plant matures, increase the amount of fertilizer gradually to 5 to 6 pounds when it is blooming and fruiting.
Every week bananas should be given an inch of water. During the summer months, add a little chelated iron. Be sure to mulch the area, but not touching the stem to hold moisture.
The hardest part of growing bananas is choosing the variety. I brought a dwarf Cavendish down from New Jersey and it bore beautiful bunch. Now that trees have grown and is shading the area, a taller variety would be more suitable. Bananas make a good screen in the yard and need lots of room to spread. For detailed information about varieties, visit the University of Florida IFAS Web site at www.ifas.ufl.edu and search for Banana Growing in the Florida Home Landscape or as for the brochure at the Pinellas County Extension office.
When the bananas are hard and green, they are fine on the stalk; however, my experience has been that the varmints start chewing on them when they start to soften but are still green. That is the time to pick them and hang them on a wire hangar in a screened room or in the garage to ripen.
If too many ripen at once, friends will be glad to share the excess.
Best of all, home-grown bananas are good eating.
Ruth Davies is a Pinellas County Master Gardener. She can be reached at sunflower1368@juno.com.
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Article published on Thursday, July 19, 2007
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