This is my 1,000th post in this forum.

As a treat, I'd like to invite you all to a presentation that I am going to give to Santa Clara Valley California Rare Fruit Growers. This is also open to the public or non-members (required $5 entrance for non-members). I'll be talking about bananas and how to grow them successfully in the Bay Area and the inland Valley of California. The meeting place will be at Emma Prusch Park, 647 King Road, San Jose 95116. Between 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm, Saturday, August 12, 2006.

I will be giving away one big Dwarf Brazilian banana plant that is ready for planting in the ground and would likely bear fruit next year if you planted it in the right location. The plant will be raffled to all interested attendees. Dwarf Brazilian is pseudostem cold hardy to zone 9.

Here's the tentative outline for my talk:

Growing Bananas
Short history
Banana cultivars
commercially grown bananas and the big banana cultivar hype
bananas the rest of the non-western world enjoys
6 major groups of bananas
common uses of bananas
different colors
different sizes (1 ft tall to 65 ft tall bananas)
different taste
influence of climate
cold hardiness
Pests and Diseases
Objectives of growing
ornamental purposes
fruiting and ornamental effect
Cold hardy types
diferent measures of cold hardiness
Inland Valley Northern California
Bay Area
General care and requirements
fertilizer, mulches, drainage, irrigation, cold protection
Tips to growing and fruiting in zone 9
Minimum requirements for hardiness
Microclimate and preferred location in your yard
Protection against the cold snap and arctic blast
General care during winter, spring and summer
Increasing chances of fruiting
Increasing fruit yield
Increasing fruit size
Uses of the male banana blossom
Care after fruiting
Advanced tips to growing in zone 8 and below
Surviving
The challenge of producing fruits in colder zones
Propagation
different types of pups
encouraging pup production
pup separation how and when
corm propagation
tissue cultured plantlets
banana seeds
transporting, packaging, shipping
Bananas in my backyard, a small tour
My yard experimentations
Sources of bananas in the USA
California Nurseries
recommended online stores
eBay
other CRFG members

Congrats on your 1000th Posting and if I were closer, I'd be attending!

I lost the indentation after pasting the text. Does anyone know the code for indenting text in the posting in this forum? the outline would make more sense if I can indent the text properly.

That's nice. How active are you in the CRFG? Always glad to see people also contribute. I can see where the indentations belong. Nice outline. - Millet

Thanks Millet.

I'm only active online but goes to the Bay Area when the events are extremely must see for me.

I wiish I can go but family first before my wish. Very important event for my 3 boys.

If i wasn't 15 and lived in New Jersey i'd totally be there

Joe:
How did your presentation at CRFG go?

I think they love it that they wanted to make a special publication from my talk and am preparing an article to be published for their magazine, both the PDF and the paper.

I managed to keep them interested for 3 hours of talk from beginning to end. They were truly interested in the possibilities of successfully growing bananas. I'm glad to share the passsion and happy to get the point across.

Here's the responses:

Quote:

"Hi Joe You did a wonderful job on educating us on growing bananas in our climate. It was definitely the best we've had all year. Thank you so very much. You are a delightful speaker with humor bubbling through which pulled the audience in completely. I trust you had a safe drive home and wasn't it nice your friends came to hear and support you! Would you consider allowing crfg to put your slideshow online or at least linking to it? Our newsletter editor Sue Conde asked if you would permit us to print out the talk into a publication - of course with full credit to you as the author. If so she would lay it out and send it to you for your editing and approval. I think it would be most welcome in the Fruit Gardener magazine too.... other personal stuff...." "Good morning Joe, Thanks for a wonderful talk on bananas. I have so much to share with my friends. I am also the editor to the "Fruit Leaf" and would love to place a special edition out just on bananas under your name based on your presentation. Can we do that? What software programs did you use? If you approve all of it, it would then go to the website PDF with a Word edition to you so you could edit for future use.... other personal stuff...."

And they (CRFG SCV) also treated me to fruit tasting at Andy's Orchards, one of the best if not the very best family owned orchard in Northern California. I got to meet Andy Mariani in person, the most knowledgeable fruit grower I've had corresponce with. I've never seen plums, peaches, nectarines, pluots so big and yet so tasty! I'm beat by light years. I've got to taste some of the dream cultivars, and they remain a dream for me because they are not suited in our area. CRFG SCV also treated me with fruits to bring home and T-shirt from Andy's Orchards.

Many people go down there for fruit tasting. Practically most fruits in their website, I was able to taste, was wondering how he managed to ripen these at the same time just for the fruit tasting.

There's a lot of interested people sharing the same passion of pushing our fruit growing beyond their limits.

As a CRFG member, I receive the Fruit Gardener (CRFG's magazine). I will be looking for the article. In fact I will have to get it signed by Joe and frame it on the wall of my office. - Millet