That is amazing! I’ve been looking for growing a banana here for about a year now but some of my friends grow some and they get discouraged because they die back or don’t make bananas that ripen in time.
1 Like
Wow! Nice Steve! I found some excellent pine bark at Menards. They have larger nuggets I use as mulch but may start adding it to my potting mixes.I use a finer pine bark right now, Again nice plant! .
1 Like
Thanks, Steven.
When you say the fines don’t move down, do you mean they won’t percolate down to fill any lower voids, or are you saying the fines don’t compress with watering? Maybe what I’m seeing is only what is dug out by the bucket pouring of water. I assume you’re pre-mixing your nuggets and peat/fines and just jiggling the container after planting, versus vibration or something else to get the fines lower before the first watering.
I’m quite impressed about the banana tree! I keep dreaming of a greenhouse!
I also like how you made your own grow bag for the tree. Looks like you may be using some woven landscape fabric or similar. I was looking closer at my root trapper containers today, and I think it is very similar texture to that filter fabric I mentioned to FigGuy in this thread. So, that is probably worth to me a shot in a hard-walled container to see if it has the same effect on roots.
Overall, I’m trying to not use 100% peat moss for conservation reasons… it’s not a very sustainable resource, but admittedly it seems hard to grow in containers without it. When you mix the peat moss 50/50 with bark chips, the cost also drops significantly. I just take the trailer to the landscaping supply yard and ask for 1/2 yard chips, but they almost always give you 3/4 to 1 yd… and that’s about $45, so about $2/cu ft wheres the peat moss you’re mentioning runs about $8/cu ft.
Here are the two pine barks I get at the landscape yard:
I mix the coarse and fines and they pretty much stay in place. You’d need a really coarse base component to get any meaningful downward movement of the fines. In your picture the top material has too much wood, not bark and is a bit too fine. I’d go with the bottom and mix in enough fines to just fill the voids.
The big banana container is two layers of old weed barrier surrounded by some salvaged fencing material. It will function just like a fabric bag.
2 Likes
Yeah I was super happy to find pine bark fines sold as mulch at Menards with ZERO wood in it. Mostly 1/4 inch pieces, perfect!
They sell mini nuggets to that I use as mulch for raised bed blueberries.
Pine bark in all my containers works so well. My currants have grown so much this year I can’t even see the pots anymore. I need to move them farther apart.
I use a 3-1-1-0.5 mix. Three parts bark one part potting soil one part compost or garden soil and1/2 part DE I use Optisorb as it has the largest pebbles.
Last year they were practically giving away miracle grow potting and garden soil. I bought a crap load. Two dollars a bag. Sometimes I need peat for blueberries and will substitute potting soil with the extra peat I don’t need for blueberries. I use a 50-50 mix of pine and peat. I saw a study on blueberries where they used 50-50 and all peat and all pine. All worked good but the 50-)50 mix worked the best.
Photos taken a few minutes ago.
I love currants my house faces north- south. Photo of north side. As you can see they thrive in this pretty much sun free location. Sun hits about 7 pm. So only an hour of direct sun. Honeyberries are there too.
5 Likes
Got it. Must just be the watering from a bucket leading to the top washing out. The dramm water breaker wand should be here soon and will hopefully prevent that issue.
Appreciate you setting me straight on the smaller pine bark containing wood… I think the place I sourced pine bark from last year had less wood. I guess if you’re not paying attention, this is what happens to you! I’ll have a sharp eye on this in the future.
Your image gives has me thinking on some additional ideas for homemade fabric containers.
Thanks, Drew. On your lead, I am using the same Optisorb in my containers. I had always heard blueberries could not do well here, but was talking with a local horticulturist who has a 14’ row and gets about 20 lb of berries per year. I’m going to try his recipe for success!
We planted some currants years ago, along with gooseberries. The gooseberries were prolific, but currents didn’t fruit before we moved. Where we live now, we are more sun challenged than shade challenged, so it is great to see how well yours are doing with minimal direct sun. They look awesome. Will have to get some going here. The first time I looked at your picture, I thought they were in-ground plants!
2 Likes
To go along with Drew’s paver vibration example,I was watching a video from Raintree Nursery’s horticulturist,potting a plant.
Instead of pushing down on the soil surface,she picked the pot up a few times and forcibly hit the ground with it.First time seeing that and now part of my practice.
3 Likes
The second photo along the back of the house ( two story) I do have two honeyberries in ground.
Here’s a photo from winter of the first picture. A little different angle, same plants though.
1 Like
@fruitnut - understood the larger bark chips are better for most plants, but are they also acceptable for newly grafted apple trees or figs that have just rooted and will be up-potted in the next year?
All, I found a pic I had from earlier this year from another landscape yard:
Definitely looks better than the wood content shown in post 23, but is it safe to assume still too much (assuming I have some need for the smaller bark)? I also notice they call it ‘bark mulch’, and not 'pine bark mulch".
I also see some ‘fir bark’ locally… is that an acceptable substitute for pine? I also see some ‘bark’ containing a mixture that includes cedar, and assume that is a no-go.
Gardener Scott on Youtube is a Master Gardener and made a video about the peat moss debate years ago and blueberry made a topic on peat moss a few years ago going over the topic. The short and long end of the stick is going for mixes you are either going for coco coir or you are going for peat moss. Most of the peat moss is mined in Canada where only something like 80% is mined and there is rejuvenation efforts to regain the lost amount as well. Coco coir is not as clean as many think because it is often times created in factories and not just take in a clean waste product like many suggest. Either way given cost reasons I think it is better to limit peat usage as is.
The smaller stuff can be used as part of most mixes. Part big/medium/small works. I found some mediums I really liked and bought about 12 bags.
The big stuff won’t work by itself for much if anything. But mixed with finer stuff should work for most stuff. Say a 4x9 inch pot of newly rooted fig. Up pot when small pot is well rooted.
Ok, thanks - wanted to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake with the new apples. I’m sensing that due to the wind and intense sun here, for water retention, I may want to supplement the large bark with some smaller, but will try some variations and see how it goes. Have 10 apples with just the large bark+promix+DE and will see how they do this year.
1 Like
We have a crabapple tree that never gets watered here. It is a standard apple size.Apples grow really well here in CO if you get a disease resistant apple. We literally have a neighborhood called applewood in the Denver area that used to be a old apple orchard and is now a rich person neighborhood
Yeah, lots of apples here on the front range; sour cherries, too. The 30 I grafted are predominantly on Bud 9, which works well here, but does require watering. I’m not going for longevity, rather ease of maintenance, fruit and variety.