Citrus Growers Forum

Laaz · Posted: Fri 27 Feb, 2009 2:05 pm

Awesome Benny. Great job !

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bencelest · Posted: Mon 02 Mar, 2009 4:50 am

Thanks Laaz.
I had a surprise this morning. Two days ago I took a picture of my babaco but his morning after looking closer I saw budding flowers . Imagine I just got that last year without roots or leaves. Now after the winter it starts to flower.

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bencelest · Posted: Mon 02 Mar, 2009 4:58 am

Some people may wonder what is the height of California Gold . Mine is
From the middle of the fruit stem the height is 4 feet and 6 inches and from the top of the fruit stem to ground is 5 feet 4 inches.

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Patty_in_wisc · Posted: Mon 02 Mar, 2009 8:23 pm

Benny, it looks like 2 flowers on the nana. I thought they are only s'posed to have one.

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BabyBlue11371 · Posted: Tue 03 Mar, 2009 4:11 am

Thanks for the updates!!!
Thank you very much for the height info!!!

Can't wait till mine does some blooming!!!

Gina *BabyBlue*

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JoeReal · Posted: Tue 03 Mar, 2009 2:20 pm

Patty_in_wisc wrote:

Benny, it looks like 2 flowers on the nana. I thought they are only s'posed to have one.

You meant two stalks? There are varieties that have more than one flowering stalk after the first generation crop, like Mahoi.

California Gold is not one of them.

But like the rest of the bananas, first to open are the female parthenocarpic flowers arranged into groups called hands. It is these flowers that turns into banana fruits, called the fingers of the hand. Each hand has at least one finger, but usually averaged about a dozen or more depending on cultivar. There could be many hands on a flower stalk, sometimes up to several hundred, depending on cultivar, and you could have thousands of individual flowers in all, just on a single flower stalk, like the Thousand Fingers banana.

After the parthenocarpic flowers comes the male flowers. We usually cut off the bloom when male flowers are starting to show to prevent formation of seeds on other bananas that are receptive for pollination. The male flowers are useless to most people, but they could processed into excellent exotic condiments. Also, the male portion of the unopened bloom can be used as vegetable salad after processing to reduce the amount of oxalic acid. The amount of oxalic acid varies with cultivars. Most dessert type bananas have high oxalic in the unopened portion of the bloom, while the cooking type bananas have lower oxalic acid content and are good to use as a high fiber vegetable in various exotic recipes.

Fortunately for Benny, the California Gold's male blooms are excellent to use in various recipes. We call this "Puso ng saging" in the Philippines, and it literally means "Heart of Banana" or Banana Heart, because it is red, and nearly heart shaped. We have several cooking recipes that uses banana heart, from veggie burger to enchiladas and salads. The banana heart of cavendish types are not good to use, no matter how hard you try to remove the oxalic acids, whereas, those of Saba, California Gold, Dwarf Brazilian, and most with balbisiana types are better to use.

bencelest · Posted: Wed 04 Mar, 2009 6:37 am

Thanks for a very good info Joe. I don''t know the terminology and the banana heart of California Gold is a bonus after knowing that I can cook it too. My wife has been eying it for a long time now. And I said over my dead body. (Heh-heh).
Patty, Joe is right. My CG has only one stalk.

bencelest · Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2009 4:49 am

I just transferred from pots and planted on the pergola plat the following:
5 super dwarf cavendish
1 lacatan
1 enano gigante corm
1 senorita corm
1 babago
3 siling labuyo (Philippine hot pepper)
1 cherimoya ( dying)
1 Early girl tomato

Patty_in_wisc · Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2009 4:15 pm

Very informative Joe - as usual. I thought I saw 2 flower buds but I guess it's the bud opening petals.
So, when the male flower emerges & it shows the female flowers, you can cut the male flower off?

Benny, I hope you can save the cherimoya! I am potting mine up now. They should get blossoms this year! My babies I grew from seed are big boys now.

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JoeReal · Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2009 5:25 pm

Patty,

You're welcome! Usually you cut the blossom when the male flowers start to show off only if you want to use the remaining blossom. There has been no significant difference if you leave the male flowers on or remove them, so it is an added work unless you intend to use the male flowers.

Regards,

Joe

Patty_in_wisc · Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2009 6:43 pm

uh oh, I'm confused again LOL. I thought, & was told, that the big bud/flower that comes out first (after the flag) IS the male flower and that all the female flowers are the nannas. Question

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JoeReal · Posted: Fri 20 Mar, 2009 7:32 pm

The whole red (sometimes green in other species) thing that comes out is called the inflorescence of the banana. It will then open, bract by bract to expose the individual flowers. The first to be exposed would be the female banana flowers which later turns into banana fruits even if they are not pollinated. After all the female flowers have been exposed, the next set would all be male flowers. These fall off after they have shed their pollens. The moment you see the "fruitlets" drying up and falling one by one, you know that you have male flowers coming out of the remaining unopened portion of the inflorescence. You can cut the remaining inflorescence if you want to use it or you can just leave it alone.

We call the inflorescence as Banana Heart.

Millet · Posted: Sat 21 Mar, 2009 12:32 am

In the current issue of California Rare Fruit Grower's magazine "The Fruit Gardner", it is recommend to cut the bloom off as soon as possible when the male flowers begin to appear. The CRFG article says that the flower takes a lot of nourishment from the plant. - Millet (1,401-)

bencelest · Posted: Sat 21 Mar, 2009 10:16 am

Thanks Patty. So do I. But I believe that cherimoya does not tolerate low tempt at 40 degrees. That's why it is dying. When I have a greenhouse that I can maintain at least 60 degrees then that should be OK.
I tend to agree with Joe regarding the banana heart issue.
I grew up growing bananas and my observation was like Joe's. There was no observance difference whether you remove the banana heart or not.
You will have the banana bunch ripe one way or another and just as big. It may be true that the plant may waste a lot nutrients to sustain the male flowers but from my observation it does not affect the fruit size or taste.
But in Asia you will harvest the banana heart anyway because that is an extra money for the grower. The banana heart can be used in many many ways in cooking. In fact my wife can not wait for me to cut the banana heart from the tree so she can use it. There is one particular cooking that the banana heart is most famous for and one of the important ingredients. It is called 'kari-kari' and my wife can not wait to cook it. Without the banana heart the kari-kari does not seem to be perfect. We substituted other kinds like artichoke but it is not the same perfect dish.

JoeReal · Posted: Mon 23 Mar, 2009 5:41 am

Millet wrote:

In the current issue of California Rare Fruit Grower's magazine "The Fruit Gardner", it is recommend to cut the bloom off as soon as possible when the male flowers begin to appear. The CRFG article says that the flower takes a lot of nourishment from the plant. - Millet (1,401-)

It is true that it takes nourishment from the mother plant, but compared to the overall massive size of the banana, the extra nourishment is often not very significant. Bananas have plenty of reserves. Even without leaves, you can form normal sized fruits, due to the massive stems and corms and the food stored in those are translocated into the fruits, so it really is not very significant if you cut the male portion of the infloresence or not.

There is also another risk that the author has not observed but which I have experienced. Sometimes when I cut off the inflorescence when the male flowers start to appear, banana heart rot or other type of black rot can occur, starting from where you cut it, propagating up to the fruits. What it does, it turns the fruit stalk black and shrivels up, starting from where you cut it. I had this happen a couple of times and have lost banana fruits up to half of my bunch. I don't know what type of fungus or bacteria is causing this, I haven't looked it up because I came up with a solution on how to overcome this. Now when I cut off the inflorescence for cooking purposes, I sterilize my knife or pruning shear and I spray lysol the cut portion, and also wipe some iodine. This way, the black rot doesn't happen. If I don't need to use the banana heart, I just let them be.

The banana grower must really be one lucky person to not have experienced such stuff when they cut-off the bloom.

One reason why such rot could happen is due to the timing. When the male flowers cometh, we would have cool nights that come morning time when air is warmer, and the banana bunch cooler, condensation forms, and is very ideal for fungal diseases. But if you do live in Southern California, or warmer climate, this will not be an issue.