advice needed on bannana plant and beanstalk

princess85

i am only just getting into gardening and dont have a great deal of knowledge. i bought a seed set for my son which contained bannana seeds ive planted them a few weeks ago and nothings happening. i have tried putting cling film over the plant pot but still no joy.any advice please?

i have a beanstalk plant which is getting quite tall now its not very old only planted a few months ago.the stalk is very thin will this eventually get thicker? and how tall can i expect it to grow? oh will this last all year round or die off?
thanks in advance to repliers :T

alanobrien

I grow a lot of tropical plants and i can tell you that
Banana seeds are notoriously difficult to germinate. Ideally they should be pre soaked for up to a week before sowing. I use the baggy method and sow into a ziploc bag containing 50% perlite and 50% seed compost. Trickle water into the bag until its just moist then put the seeds in and seal. I then put into a prop at 35c and wait. They can take up to a year to germinate so you have to be patient and even then the seed may not germinate if it wasnt fresh. Goood luck

princess85

thanks for your reply,im not holding out much hope of it growing as i dont think the seed will have been very fresh it will probably have been sat in the bag in the shop for a long time.

alanobrien

You never know, i got fed up waiting for some in the past and put them in the back of the greenhouse over winter and to my suprise they sprouted the following year. Funny things bananas..

Joly_Roger

I'm not sure what seed you had, but edible bananas (eg cavendish) are nowhere near hardy in the UK, so you're better off buying a Musa Basjoo, Musa Sikimensis or a Musella Lasiocarpa if you're after lush banana plant foliage. They are root hardy and will re-shoot in spring ater winter cuts the foliage down to the ground.

With the Basjoo and Sikimensis, the psuedotrunk will survive a mild winter, or even a harsh one if you protect it. The advantage of keeping the psuedotrunk is that you will get a much bigger plant. I bought a small (& reduced) Basjoo last year for £3.75, protected the 10" trunk over winter and its now about 4 foot tall. I reckon it'll be 6ft by end of August and next year should be above the fence. Good luck.

Joly_Roger

By the way, nanas grow quickly!

Here's mine in April (the one I bought for £3.75 last year) after I took off the winter protection, you can see it's only a few inches tall:





and here it is yesterday

tessie_bear

wow wicked banana plant...weve got a banana plant in the garden of our house in spain...i never thought u could get one going in uk

hethmar

alan/joly, as you are nana experts, can you advise. We bought a banana plant in a pot last year. We covered it over winter - its still in a large pot - but all the leaves died off. We have nurtured it and more leaves started sprouting from the base BUT after a couple of days the leaves seem to get a brown sun burn type look. What are we doing wrong please? Oh just looked at your April photo joly, thats basically what ours looked like last month and though it has a few more leaves now they get brown very quickly.

Joly_Roger

Hi Hethmar, might be wrong but my opinion is that your nana simply dried out in the sun and heat.

In the growing season, nanas need loads and loads of water due to: their rapid growth, their watery make-up and the large surface area of their leaves / paddles. Pots can dry out very quickly, especially with the relentlessly hot & sunny weather England has been enjoying recently.

I would remove it from the pot and plant it in the ground, somewhere with a bit of space in case it grows big! Also somewhere with rich fertile soil, adding fresh compost and / or well rotted manure. I find that the contents of a growbag are ideal for improving soil (cheap too!).

If you don't want to take it out of the pot, see if you can:
A. Site the pot somewhere a little more shaded (but still in the sun for part of the day).
B. Place a large saucer underneath.
C. Mulch the pot (pebbles would be ideal)
D. Water the pot daily
and
E. If it's terracotta, either line the inside with polythene or paint the pot with varnish to slowdown surface evaporation. Terracotta is porous so the soil dries out from all sides.


My Basjoo is in the ground so suffers much less from surface evaporation and is able to send its roots deep. I also use a straw mulch (to retain moisture) and it gets half a watering can of H2O every day. The other advantage of being in the ground is that the roots will be protected from frost (unlike in a pot).

Also nanas like humid, tropical conditions. In a pot they're likely to be isolated with dry air, whilst in the ground there are likely to be lots of other plants nearby, all expelling moisture from their leaves, thus creating the humid environment that the nanas favour.

Anyway, good luck! I've got 5 other nanas in the garden, 2 of them are going in the conservatory this winter as they will eventually yield edible nanas (in a few years) but are only hardy to about 5C!

hethmar

Many thanks. We water all our pots religiously (takes over an hour now every morning and evening and then theres the 12 hanging baskets)..........so I think you may be on to something about its position which has been in a sunny place up to now. The problem with planting it in the soil is that we have a large wild garden and it would be lost to be honest. Thats why we tend to have lots of pots as you at least get a decent show in one area of the garden

Will have a word with OH tonight about it. Its his baby - he usually does well with all his exotic plants so he was disappointed with this one.

Id love an orange or lemon tree - anyone got one? Thing is we dont have a conservatory, thought we have a very sunny patio and large sunny kitchen - I wonder if it would work?

alanobrien

Hethmar, A banana pup will turn brown for many reasons. To much sun and not enough watering or even over feeding will do it and its difficult to over feed a banana! I plant all my potted bananas in a 50/50 mix of perlite and multi purpose compost.

If yours is a Siki or Basjoo they are tough so i would just repot in well drained compost water lightly and feed weekly until regrowth starts.

Yes you can also keep Citrus. I have a Eureka lemon, Navelina Orange and Gapefruit all in 30L pots on the patio. They go in the greenhouse when temperature falls below 5c so a sunny kitchen would be fine.

Here's a few of my Bananas just dont ask how many i have