Going Bananas!

 When Hurricane Dorian hit the island in 2019, every living plant around our house was destroyed.  We had to finally get down to the bare dirt and start planting everything all over again.

One of the things we decided to try was bananas!  We ordered one plant each of four different varieties.  We chose the varieties that were listed as most hardy as we do sometimes get an edge of freezing weather in the winter.

When the plants came, they were like dead sticks with a small bundle of roots at one end.  Trish and I set them out in April and waited.  Six weeks passed and they continued to look like dead sticks.  I even called the nursery from which we had ordered them and told them I thought the plants were dead.  The lady I spoke with told me to scrape the side of the “stick” and see if there was any green down under the brown.  If so, she said, just wait and watch!

By the end of May we had the first emerging green leaf!

All through last summer the plants grew…at a surprisingly rapid rate; about one new leaf every ten days or so.  By exactly this day last summer, the plants were almost as tall as I was.

Winter arrived.  In February we had a couple of nights when the temperature dropped to the edge of freezing.  As spring arrived, we saw that most of the banana leaves had turned brown and were falling off. But, new growth was starting!  Soon there was no doubt that the trees were alive and well.

Through this summer the growth has been amazingly fast!  About a new leaf every week, and new babies coming up from the original plant roots.  Now the plants have totally outgrown me!

Will we have bananas?  The answer will depend on the coming winter. We are told that it takes about 16 plus or minus months for the bloom to appear.  Then it takes more months for the fruit to appear, grow, and ripen.  If we have a mild winter, all of this could happen!  We will let you know if it does.  In the meantime, this certainly is lots of fun!