Princess

I am watching Princess carefully, as she is showing signs of an impending flower. I attempted to mix up a foliar spray cocktail to get some calcium to the plant. I crushed up two vitamins and mixed them with some powered milk and water. I sprayed the leaves with this solution. I don't know if it did any good. The cigar leaf is still pale but is coloring up slowly. It would probably be better if the plant would wait until it can produce a few more large leaves. If not, I hope the current cigar leaf will be a decent sized leaf so that the plant can photosynthesize as much as possible. Another concern is that I have cut back a lot of the older petioles because they were decaying due to the low temperatures and the slow down of growth while in the greenhouse. Now the pseudostem is very thin. I may have to brace the stem with some bamboo if the plant flowers as I anticipate.

Mother Plant Fruit Update

The fruit still look good.

Mother Plant's Last Pups

Mother Plant has raised the population of banana trees with all her offspring. Since she is fruiting, I don't expect her to produce more pups. The last two pups are quite healthy and have grown more vigorously than all the previous pups. I think they will be able to fruit within a year's time, give or take a couple of months.

Gros Michel Update

I have one Gros Michel plant indoors and one outside in the greenhouse. I have contemplated putting one of them in the ground this spring. Perhaps if I place it beside the porch, the plant will stay warm enough for the pseudostem to survive the winter.

More Bananas???

I noticed ants coming out of the pseudostem of Princess, the banana. After I sprayed the ants, I noticed that the last leaf to emerge is smaller than previous leaves. The current cigar leaf seems smaller too. I wonder if this plant is about to flower. The leaves may be because I interrupted her dormant state in the colder greenhouse to bring her inside the warm house. However the last time I attributed smaller leaves to change in conditions, but I later discovered a flower was forming. If this plant flowers, it will be about sooner than I expected--only 1 year and 7 months to flowering. I may be overly optimistic. I guess we will see soon enough.

Inflorescence Update

I removed the bell from Mother Plant. All the remaining flowers were male, and the bracts was taking a long time to lift--just another sign that the banana's energy reserves are limited. So that the plant does not have to expend unnecessary energy, I decided the bell should be cut off. Noticed the one picture with the fused fingers in the middle.

Propagation via corm pieces???

I brought my small dwarf Cavendish plants indoors to get them growing. On top of the soil in one of the pots I found a piece of corm with a bud on it. I kind of wonder if it will grow, so I potted it up.