Speaking of bananas , I bought 2 at Home Depot yesterday for $19.00 ea. One dwarf cavendish and one Raja Puri. I was tempted to buy a nice ice cream and one that is really red leaves and trunk but I think I will stick to dwarf kind this time.
Here's the dwarf cav I just trasferred to a wine barrel this morning. It will be there permanently for it will fruit at the height of 3 feet. It's really good size plant.

I so wish I could get plants like that here locally, Patty, do find anything like that in your neighborhood, or even Citrus??? No one is brave enough to let folks here give the plants a try. I have to do mail order for every thing. BAH!!!! Nice Orchid Benny, looks like a Cat? Oh well, thanks for all the encouragement!!! Banana' s are us!

Benny and Joan,

To make sure your potted bananas will have decent sized harvestable fruits, maintain one and only one pup at a time. Even if it will break your heart, you will have to cut off the other pups to the ground level or separate them from time to time. otherwise, you will produce many thin sized stalks that will produce tiny flowers and microscopic fruits, or not even bloom at all.

Joe

Thanks a lot Joe. You have helped me so much more than you'll ever know.
I am putting everything you told me in a special folder including your advice regarding the california gold fruit.

Hi Joan, I got my 2 IC off Ebay, & a smaller sized Double Mahoi from Garnetmoth thru a trade. Go for it! If I can grow here, so can you. Find something that is smaller than Ice Cream, but good eating. I think Cavendish is good from what I read.
You Grow Girl!!

Thanks everyone, will definatly be giving this a try. Joe your advice and counsel is most helpful and appreciated. You are a good tutor and Benny too!!! I am still frustrated that a person in this state can't find any plants of the citrus or banana variety in places like Home Depot etc. If folks were exposed to these plants, maybe they would try them, it isn't 20 below here all year and I have to beieve there are adventurous folks like me all over the place. Oh well! Joan

Joan, I agree. If I go into Stein's nursery (Chain around the country?), or any nursery here & ask for citrus fertilizer, they look at me like Im' nuts! There was one large, independantly owned nursery that had ONE citrus & I think it just said "Orange" tree ,but not what kind. It was in about 5-6 gal pot & price was over $150.00!!!! That was about 3-4 yrs ago.
Last year March I went to HD in Fl when I was there, & they had a LARGE assortment of very healthy citrus ...& BIG ones too (taller than me)-they are in 5 gal buckets now. All 3 cost just over $50.00 & I drove them home saving postage & handeling.
And, talk about all the crazy weather...I've noticed for last 2-3 weeks your temps are 10 to 15 degrees higher than mine!

By the way , I forgot to mention that when I purchased my banana trees at Stokes, I saw a dozen or so AE AE bananas planted it large containers . The containers ranged from 25-45 gallons and the plants were huge, I must say that they are really awesome looking. Nah at $300 each I passed on them.
I never heard of these have you?
Karl

I heard of AE AE bananas & I think they are rare. Don't know much else about them. I'll bet JoeReal knows!

Ae Aes are nothing but variegated Popoulo. These are one of the most cold sensitive bananas I ever killed so won't even bother with them unless I live in zone 10 or higher.

They are not really rare at all but only propagated by traditional pup method because the tissue culture is very problematic when it comes to propagating them. The moment they can be tissue cultured, expect the prices to go downhill. There are many promising TC techniques and one of these days, it could pan out.

The taste of the fruits is exactly the same as the green Popoulo banana. Raja Puri which is cold hardy, would taste far better than Ae ae.

People buy them because they can sell them very high price at eBay, so all the more the demand, the higher the prices and it feeds on a positive feedback loop that is why the price is so high for a banana that's not really worth the time growing in my yard outside.

Someone gave me a gift of Ae ae once and it grew very nice, but the mother plant and all the pups died out when temperature went below 40 deg F and it was not even frosting yet. It never returned.

Oh yes, I am sour graping on the Ae ae, LOL!!! But when the time comes that TC culture of it is common place, i could try various experimentations to know how to make it survive our zone 9 winters... By then it would not be rare anymore, but it is the challenge of growing it here successfully that I would like. Too bad the current price do not give me enough room for various testing.