| echinosum 2008-02-28, 5:26 pm |
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Maxim;776577 Wrote:
> Would it be suitable to cultivate a banana plant in suburban London? I
> have been looking at several varieties of banana plant on this page:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2a2yea
>
> I particularly like the one with the bright red flowers! Unfortunately
> my last banana plant which i tried to grow got infested with these
> little annoying white bugs, around a millimetre big while i was away on
> holiday!
If you look at the key at the bottom of the page, you see he has
hardiness symbols as one, two or three blue spider icons. In general
for suburban SW London, I would look for a variety with at least one
blue spider (hardy to -5), assuming you aren't in a frost pocket. In
fact the only one he sells which he claims to have any hardiness to
that level is Musa sikkimensis.
Musa basjoo is the other well-known (root) hardy banaba, but he's not
selling it.
To choose something else, you will have to know your garden conditions
very well and hang around on exotic plant forums where lots of banana
growers hang out, who have recorded what is necessary to get particular
things to survive. I'd have a look through the posts on the (now closed)
UKOasis site - lots of posts about marginal bananas there.
Growingontheedge is the successor site, but it hasn't been going very
long.
People don't usually grow these plants for the flowers. You have to
overwinter the pseudostem for several years to get them to flower, and
then they die after flowering. People usually grow them for the leaves,
and maybe don't mind if they resprout each year from the roots.
To avoid the nasty-bugs-when-small phenonmenon, consider buying a
reasonable sized plant rather than seeds. I don't think bananas are the
easiest thing to grow from seeds. In fact, cavendish bananas (the ones
we eat) don't have seeds, they can only be vegetatively propagated.
--
echinosum
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