![]() The banana fruit has white flesh when ripe and its creamy texture and vanilla ice cream flavor give it its second name, the ice cream banana. The banana skin is blue-tinted before the banana is ripe, hence its first name-the blue java banana. The leaves and stem on a healthy ice cream banana tree are lime green, and the blossoms that the banana grows out of are red. Its height varies from 10 to 20 feet tall, with the leaves growing to be as large as nine feet long and two feet wide. The ice cream banana tree is long and skinny. These species tend to produce triploid progeny which is why they are used to produce new banana varieties.What Does an Ice Cream Banana Tree Look Like? NamwaĪll of the edible banana varieties are from the same two species Musa acuminata, and Musa balbisiana, or sometimes they are a hybrid between the two. The fruit is very sweet, yellow, and denser than a typical caendish group banana. The fruits are deep red color, and the plant is ridiculously beautiful as well, with a great deal of red on the pseudostems and petioles. This is the most popular banana grown in the Phillippines. The short fat fruits are mostly used for cooking but are also quite delicious eaten as a desert banana. This is the largest of the fruiting bananas in plant size. ![]() They are on the large side, growing to 12-15 feet tall. Ice Cream is considered to be the most delicious desert banana by many. Bananas are easy, just give them what they want…lots of it. When I see the poor thing, it has no mulch, and the soil is bone dry. Sometimes they even ask me to look at their plant to see what I think is wrong. I tell people these rules any time they are willing to listen, but very few of them actually follow through with any of it. Once you harvest the bunch, that shoot will not grow any more leaves or flowers. The other time to prune, is after a shoot produces a bunch of bananas. Allowing more than that to grow, spreads the plants resources too thin to produce well. After a few years, when the corm gets a little older and larger, leave two baby shoots to grow for the following year. Cut them off with a shovel when they are small, leaving the one most vigorous shoot to be next year’s banana producing shoot, as well as the large shoot that was already present of course. If you follow the four rules above, then your plant will be very happy, and respond by sending up many little baby shoots… way too many shoots. There are two times when you need to prune a banana plant. I start fertilizing when I see the first new leaf emerging in the Spring, and I continue until the average daily low temperatures drop below 60F in the Fall. Don’t aply any fertilizer in the Winter months. Bananas stop growing when temperatures get too low. Use 1-1.5 lbs of granular fertilizer, every month during the growing season. The Ideal ratio for banana fertilizer is 6-2-12. It sounds like a lot, but it settles down to less than two feet very quickly, and it breaks down over time. I pile the mulch up about three feet deep around the base of an adult plant. Compost, or any other organic mulch works fine. Pile it right against the trunk of the plant. ![]() When you plant a baby banana, start with several inches of mulch, and add more as it gets taller. Most plants will rot if you pile mulch up against their trunk, but not bananas. This is the key to having a thriving banana plant. In dry conditions a large established plant can survive on the moisture stored in the corm, but this weakens the plant. Standing water will rot the corm, and kill the plant. If they get less than that, they will grow, and can be a beautiful part of your landscaping, but they won’t produce bananas.īananas don’t like to be dry. They need at least four hours of direct sunlight to produce fruit. Bananas need full sun to really do their best.
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