Our first bananas from our indoor dwarf banana tree! However, I didn’t notice them when I laid the plant down outside to root prune it and the main trunk with bananas on it snapped! Man, I have been waiting 7 or 8 years for these bananas!!! So frustrating!!! Too green, but I’m trying to ripen them in a bag.
This plant needed to be root pruned about 3 or 4 years ago! Very root bound! Anyway, with a good prune and new soil, hopefully they’ll come back quicker next time. It shoots up pups from the base. You live and learn! Fortunately I’ve been letting another pup grow right with the other one, so hopefully this will produce bananas much quicker.
Any experience with these? I don’t have to wait another 7 to 8 years for another batch, do I? Should I have 2 trunks growing in the same pot so I don’t have to wait after the other bears fruit? Is it true that once it bears fruit that the trunk dies?
This part is easiest… yes! The fruit is the end of the “true stem” and will never produce any new leaves on that stem.
However, I would say you should pot that up into a larger pot and not do the root pruning. Instead, when each pseudostem fruits, you should select one or two healthy new pups, separate them from the rest of the corm (make sure they get a chunk of it if they don’t already have their own roots), and plant those in new large pots of soil.
In other words, don’t root prune the main corm, discard it and start with new pups.
I did grow a banana for awhile, but mostly this advice comes from what I’ve absorbed from lurking for a long time on the (now-dead) bananas.org forum.
From your photos, I don’t think the bananas are full enough to ripen properly. They need to be big enough to fill out the shape so the ridges are not so sharp.
Also do you know the variety? Some types don’t actually make edible fruit although it is appearing like a banana, but it will never ripen or soften up. A lot of ornamental varieties fall into this category.
