Orlando Banana-O-Rama
Grow
Banana on a corm
Banana Growing in the Florida Home Landscape calls Florida a climatically marginal area for commercial banana production, and the reason is freezes. Dwarf types belong in a home landscape. What survives a bad January is usually underground.
Florida is considered a climatically marginal area for commercial banana production due to our subtropical climate and occasional freezes.
A herb, not a tree
The trunk is a pseudostem made of packed leaf sheaths. The real stem is an underground rhizome, the corm, and it carries 200 to 500 fibrous roots that can run 5 feet deep and 16 feet sideways in good soil. The flowering stalk pushes up through the center of the pseudostem 10 to 15 months after planting, by which time the plant has made 26 to 32 leaves. The banana growing guide calls that event shooting. From shooting to harvest is another 80 to 180 days depending on temperature, cultivar, soil moisture, and care.
Freeze cuts it down
Shoot growth is best between 78°F and 82°F, fruit growth between 84°F and 86°F. Growth slows below 60°F and stops at 50°F. Between 60°F and freezing you get chilling injury, and its signature is choking: the flowering stalk or fruit bunch fails to emerge from the pseudostem at all. Chilled fruit also ripens to a dull yellow or greenish gray, comes out distorted, and rots more. At or below 32°F everything above ground goes water-soaked, then brown and dead. Below 28°F the plant may be killed to the ground, and new growth usually sprouts from the rhizome when warm weather returns. Heat has a ceiling too. At or above 98°F leaves scorch and new leaves come out with very narrow blades.
| Temperature | What the paper says |
|---|---|
| 78–86°F | Best shoot and fruit growth |
| Below 60°F | Growth slows. Chilling injury, including choking |
| 32°F and below | Freeze damage to leaves, pseudostems, fruit |
| Below 28°F | May kill to the ground. The corm can return |
| 98°F and above | Leaf scorch. Narrow new leaves |
A row cover is the tool that fits that table on a cold night. Get this. It buys a margin on a light freeze. It does not make Central Florida south Florida.
Dwarf Cavendish, and what to avoid
The Cavendish group is the grocery banana, and within it the clones differ mainly by how tall the pseudostem gets. Dwarf Cavendish is the shortest, and the banana growing guide says it is widely planted, better adapted to the cool subtropics than most other commercial cultivars, and recommended for south Florida where in frost-free years with good care it produces abundant fruit. Its disadvantage is susceptibility to Black Sigatoka. Williams is also reported tolerant of cool subtropical areas. Gros Michel is the one to skip: poor cold tolerance, susceptible to both Panama disease and Sigatoka, and the banana growing guide says not to plant it in a home landscape.
Two diseases set the ceiling. Sigatoka is a pair of related fungi, Yellow and Black, that attack and kill leaves, which can weaken the plant enough to cut or eliminate fruit. The banana growing guide says Black Sigatoka is more of a problem in large commercial plantings than in an isolated clump in a yard, and that both are worse in continuously rainy weather. Panama disease is Fusarium oxysporum f. Sp. Cubense. It attacks the roots and colonizes the conducting tissue of the pseudostem until the plant collapses. Races 1 and 2 are present in Florida. Infested soil limits what you can grow there, permanently. The FHIA varieties were bred against this: FHIA-01, sold as Goldfinger, is resistant to Panama disease and to both Sigatokas.
How to plant
- Start from large sword suckers or maidenheads. A sword sucker is the one attached firmly to the mother rhizome with narrow, sword-like leaves. Water suckers sit next to the mat but are only superficially attached, have broad leaves, and the banana growing guide says they produce inferior fruit.
- Cut sword suckers off vigorous clumps with a spade when they are 4 to 5 feet tall. Check the roots. Nodulations and internal lesions mean nematode or borer damage. Tissue-cultured plants are the clean option if you can find them.
- The banana growing guide gives March, April, and May as the best planting months for south Florida with irrigation, otherwise wait for the June rains. Central Florida is colder, so plan on a freeze rather than hoping past one.
- Dig a wide hole, 3 feet across by 2 feet deep if you can. Mix composted organic matter or a sand and peat mixture into the native soil at no more than half and half. Water it in thoroughly and mulch heavily.
- Full sun, or close to it. The banana growing guide allows light shade but shade delays fruit. Keep the mat thinned to one or two strong stems and take the rest.
Spacing depends on the variety. Dwarf plants can sit as close as 8 feet from each other; large varieties want 12 feet or more to leave room for the mat to expand. Bananas can go 10 feet or more from an outdoor wall as a sunscreen, but the banana growing guide warns against planting near windows because of toppling in strong wind.
Ground or pot
The banana growing guide is written for plants in the ground, and the numbers say why: a 3 by 2 foot hole, roots that run 16 feet laterally, and a plant that can carry a 25 to 40 pound bunch. It also gives an out for wet ground, which is common here. Where the water table sits within about 7 feet of the surface or the yard floods after heavy rain, plant on a mound of native soil 2 to 3 feet high and 4 to 10 feet across. If your only option is a container, understand what you are trading: a pot you can move indoors, against a plant that will not reach the size the yield figures assume.
When to pick
Cut the bunch when the fingers are plump but before they start to turn yellow. The tell is shape rather than color: the edges of each fruit have smoothed out and the sides have swelled. The banana growing guide suggests harvesting 7 to 14 days before the fruit would ripen on the plant, and says hanging the bunch in a shady, cool place seems to give better flavor than letting it ripen outside. A hook keeps the bunch off the counter while it finishes. Get this. Do not refrigerate bananas before they ripen. Chilling injury means they may never ripen properly, and you get discolored peel, discolored pulp, and poor flavor. Bunches run 25 to 40 pounds per pseudostem, and a well-cared-for plant can push 100. Not every banana on a stalk ripens at once, which is the only reason a bunch that size is manageable.
Questions
Will it fruit after a freeze?
The tops can die below 28°F and the corm usually resprouts when warmth returns. Fruit that same year is not a promise. Time from planting a small sucker to harvest is 9 to 20 months even without a setback.
Are grocery bananas Florida fruit?
Almost never. Imports fill grocery bins. The banana growing guide calls the state climatically marginal for commercial production.
Should I dig up the corm after a freeze?
No. New growth usually comes from the rhizome once it warms up. Wait for it.
Sources
Tropics year-round versus a freeze here, or the shop for hangers and cloth.