Hardy bananas have sprouted!

[J-P]

ditto that.

my horseradish that was transplanted in March is not over 3 feet tall =) Raw horseradish around here is quite rare. You can count the growers here on one hand.

[RTR]

Rhubarb is another similar case. It can be ornamental or edible or both, but is largely ignored by home gardeners.

[Puffer King]

The banana forum .com

[bertie 83]

Building a 4 x 4 x 2 raised bed for mine, it will be filled with lots of manure and compost, it will be moveable for when I move. Would this be an ok size for it. Also a small plant has sprouted next to it, I hope it is s banana tree too and not a weed lol will wait and see. Gale force winds forecast tonight so moved it indoors. This is the wettest and windyist drought in British history. Still I need not use my hose durin the drought as it rains most days lol

[RTR]

Bananas throw "pups" all during the growing season. It is the only reproduction available easily for the edible types. Commercial growers prefer the more distant pups for propagation. I suspect that is as digging them out does least harm to the mother plant. But the ones I dig up and store bare-root and leafless wrapped in plastic, I likely will break off a pup or two to grow on over the winter indoors in pots as insurance.

I have never any movable bed that large, so have no basis for judgement there. Pot/containers over 2 ft cubed are out of my range for portability.

Wind makes bananas look shredded, but doe not seem to do as much functional damage as you might think.

HTH

[bertie 83]

Do you think it would be a suitable size for a single plant to grow successfully?

[RTR]

Compared to the end-of-season density in my bed, it is more than generous. The earliest pictures in the album were while there were only low-40s (I think it was 41 but would have to check downstairs). The bed now has somewhere in the mid-50s I think. By the end of the season it will be high 60s to 70s.

But it is impossible to hold to to a single plant IME. Even the pseudostems of the non-hardy types carried over dominant during the winter will thow several pups per season, even if they are stripped in the fall or spring before replanting. Digging out pups close to the "mother" pseudostem during the growing season sets the mother plant back by too much root disturbance.

[bertie 83]

Cool so I might have more than one plant by the end of summer, I still cannot work out if the other plant in the pot is a weed or not, not like any weed I have seen. Fingers crossed lol its such a cool plant

[RTR]

My bed is currently having its first crop of baby offsets for this season. These do not have the extended stalks that the first spring crop almost all showed. They unfurl their first leaves right at the soil/mulch surface.

I'll try to get herself to get a snap of one or more babies next weekend.

It s time to change the photo point to be able to see the whole bed. The oldest psuedostems are ~8 feet now, the younger parts of the bed pushing or just over six feet total height.. All the shots to date are close to SSW views. We have to shift out to NNW views from up the drive a bit to see the whole bed now.

[RTR]

Got the second week of whole-bed shots up (view WNW), plus a shot from the south deck down on the whole bed. BTW, that Albizia branches which look like they are in the banana bed are not - they are betwwen the deck and the bananas.

We have'n gotten any decent really small pup photos yet, but will try again.

[RTR]

http://photobucket.com/musabasjoo

After the recent weather and computer issues, we finally got the pictures up to date.

There are a couple missing one of me with a hound we were sitting, and the baby offset pics did not turn out well. We have to decide if yours truly is appropriate, and get more baby pictures (it is dark under there, we'll need flash).

[RTR]

Sandy's worst is past without us even losing power - Thank Goodness. 60+ MPH winds are nervous-making. There is no damage that we can see, other than the expected shredding of the bananas.

Fall hurricanes, or Post-Tropical Cyclones in the NWS' new terminology are a bit hard on trunkless trees such as bananas. They were at the end of their season anyway, but we got the routine photos before and some more afterward. They are not yet posted on Photobucket, but should be up soon.

[Pufferpunk]

Whew, I was worried about you! Thanks for the update, glad all are OK, including the bananas.

[bertie 83]

It really unnerves me when I hear of such weather over there. It's good to hear all is ok.
My banana plant moved in to the house some time ago, we had no real summer so growth was minimal. It has taken up a prime spot in a 30 gallon tub by my smallest fish tank.

[RTR]

It was a bit hairy while the high winds were coming through (we peaked at 60+ MPH), but for a change we did not lose power. We had all (literally dozens) of flashlights scattered in every room, and we had a lot of light flickers, but no real interruptions.

Herself got the photos up, but Photobucket changed the loading technique - again- and have no instructions up but the old ones - Duh! They also scrambled the sequence of the shots -third time for that. There are number of during-the-storm and post-storm shots also, but honestly it not worth going in until the sequence is restored. I'll re-post when it is re-sequenced. A few during-the-storm shots are quite fuzzy but interesting. They were taken through multiple glass layers with lots of rain-spots.

Fall hurricanes hit here fairly frequently, but rarely storms of this size and strength. The banana will keep growing until hard freeze, but the foliage loss from a storm like this sets them way back. The shredding of the foliage along the secondary leaf veins actually preserves a good bit of photsythetic area. The drive was covered with banana leaves this morning.