After the brutal winter we had, I wanted to share which bananas survived here in coastal North Carolina. The top inch or two of ground actually froze for a few days during the worst of the cold, something I hadn't yet seen in my nine years living here. Our first hard freeze (29 degrees on December 17th) killed the above-ground portion of the plants. For the remainder of the winter I did nothing to cover or protect them in any way, an admittedly risky move since the month of January featured 14 consecutive days with low temperatures below freezing! The pseudostems were sawed down just above ground level around the first of March.

Misi Luki - SURVIVED! In fact the new leaves are shooting straight up through the "stump" of last year's plant.

Red Iholene - DEAD.

Ice Cream - SURVIVED! It's sprouting from a new stem a couple inches away from last year's stump.

Cavendish - DEAD. Both large specimens gone.

Texas Star/Dwarf Orinoco - SURVIVED! These were the first to resprout this spring and are already 18-24 inches tall.

Williams - DEAD.

They were all planted at the same depth with roughly 5-6 foot spacing between plants. Hopefully this can help others who might be considering which banana varieties to try to grow in non-tropical climates.

I planted a Dwarf Orinoco in eary April. It was extremely small only about four inches tall before planting and is now about nine inches. It is planted on the south side of a brick building so it should have some protection from the arctic wind, although most years it does not get very cold here this year is an exception with a low around 21F.

Banana hardiness is a highly debated and evolving subject. Only a few definite hardiness ratings are known, but many others deserve to be tried. As more rare high altitude species come into cultivation, this list will be drastically altered.

Musa Basjoo: hardy to zone 5 if protected, 7 unprotected. (The hardiest known banana).
Musella lasiocarpa: Hardy to at least zone 7.
Musa veluntia: Hardy to at least zone 7.

Candidates to try:
Musa "Dwarf" Cavendish (Does well in containers)
Musa Orinoco
Musa sikkimensis
Musa Rajapuri (Recommended for beginners, nearly fool proof)
Musa Mysore (Very tasty - wind and disease resistant)
Ensete glaucum.

Millet (990-)

California Gold and California Cold are two varieties of bananas that are promoted as the most cold hardy edible bananas. Basjoo is more cold hardy, but not edible.

I have been Growing bananas for many years, unknown variety. My question is what is the variety found in grocery stores. I know it is not cold hardy but I want one and will build a greenhouse suitable for it. Does anyone know of a source?

Most commercial bananas are Musa Cavendish varieties--one of the most common is Grand Nain.

I recently bought a Veinte Cohol banana from Going Bananas nursery in Homestead, FL. We'll see if it lives up to the hype: it's reputed to be the fastest maturing banana variety out there and stands the best chance of producing edible fruit in a single growing season outside of the tropics.

A nice little write-up about Veinte Cohol bananas starts on page 4 of this pdf link: http://www.urelations.armstrong.edu/compass/Compass_spr08.pdf

Hershell, Grand Nain banana is the variety shown in my Avatar. It is the most widely grown commercial banana in the world today. Grand Nain is the Chiquita cultivar sold in most all stores. Fruit bunches may weight up to 150-lbs. It is also a nice landscape plant and has good wind resistance. The medium height plant is suited to landscape and containers, however, it is not cold tolerant. Hight is approximately 8-ft (2.4 m). Grand Nain banana plants are generally easy to locate at most good nurseries, or can be purchased from Stokes.

Tarmstrong, the variety Veinte Cohol is a cultivar from the Philippines. It is a vigorous growing variety, which causes the production of a LOT of suckering , thus the name which translates roughly as "Twenty Shoots". The fruit is esteemed for its sweet flavor, but produces relatively small bunches and thus smaller yields than most cultivars. Millet (989-)

One of my friends in my city have a musa veluntina and he manage to get throw the winter in zone 6

so it is possible with some air/ground cover

Skeeter - you are right down the road with similar weather/climate-
what varities of bannana do you recommend -and a good source - looking for some that will actually produce fruit.
BTW - I grew up in P'cola, my folks live in Lillian, AL

Does anyone care to weigh in on the debate as to if California Gold and dwarf orinoco are the same?

Kyle