Banana (Musa genus)

This is my second banana tree. I had my first when I was in college. There is a reason this was the first plant to be domesticated. Except for frost, they are nearly impossible to kill. Years ago, a Knoxville herb nursery had a large banana tree growing in the ground inside the greenhouse. As I recall, he gave me one of the shoots growing from the base of the tree.

The shoot was about six inches long but had no roots at all. The nursery owner said to plant it and keep it moist. I did and put it in my apartment window. After a month, the shoot looked like it was quite dead, possibly rotten. After two months, it leafed out. I was astounded. By the time I graduated, it was over four feet tall. Unfortunately, I could not fit it into my car when I moved home, so I left it at my fraternity house. They left it out in the yard where it froze.

Now I have a Jamaican red dwarf banana. When I received this shoot, it was already rooted in a tiny pot. It had a couple of leaves smaller than my hand. Now it has nine leaves. The largest is about eight inches wide and nearly two feet long. (As the lower leaves wither, I remove them down to the base.)

Banana leaves sprout from the center of the plant tightly rolled. Once the leaf has emerged, it unrolls. Alternate leaves grow almost opposite each other, offset from the leaves below. As you view the plant from the top, each pair of leaves is rotated about 45 degrees counterclockwise from the pair below.

My banana leaves "sweat" along the edges. When my plants were still outside, I thought this was merely dew. Although it is now inside the sunroom for the winter, it still drips water from the edges. Obviously, this is not dew. I don't believe it is a response to dry air because both summer and sunroom have plenty of humidity.

I planted a pair of everbearing strawberries in the 20 inch diameter pot as companion plants for the banana. I don't think they will form a symbiotic relationship, but I decided the two fruits somehow belonged together.

Late last spring, I bought Miracle-Gro organic topsoil to fill my large pots, mistaking it for potting mix. This stuff is intended to be an amendment for natural soil. Before I could replace it with something more suitable for container gardening, the banana sank a taproot into this stuff. I decided that if it liked that soil so well, I'd leave it there when I transplanted. Since then I've added some organic blood meal, but that's about it. It seems perfectly happy.

I hope to see both strawberries and bananas next year.