i harvested these kokopos on 10/23, the week prior to the peduncle had dropped significantly, and it wasn’t really ripening anymore, i started thinning the bottom clusters because they just were not filling out and ripening for some reason, when i had cut the bunch, i also cut the main pseudostem down, i took a look at the peduncle and it came out easily and i could see that it had been damaged and rotted inside so that’s why my bananas did not fill and ripen properly and explains why the peduncle dropped the previous week of the harvest. i did pick one before i harvested the whole bunch and let that ripen in a brown bag, it took a while to get soft but it was still green, this variety is eaten green, tasted pretty good, better than the store bought ones. i gave a lot away and only have one cluster left, since i have another kokopo that is fruiting.
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i went away for a week and came back to this dwarf namwah flowering.
and i have this unknown mystery banana that also started flowering. this is the one that was sold as ‘veinte cohol’ but after some research, found out it is not that variety.
this is the worst time for my bananas to be fruiting, i don’t think they will make it through the winter, they are too big to protect. i had stopped fertilizing these in September thinking they would slow down but it’s been warm still and they haven’t. so for bananas that don’t have a short cycle, it’s important to time it right so they don’t do this again, meaning i have to have them at least halfway to 3/4ths through their cycle the first year, that way they can fruit earlier in the year in their second year. i just pushed all my bananas way too hard with fertilizer that most of them flowered in less than a year from planting.
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I’ve got the same issue, all my remaining banana, three flowers, are flowering too late in the year. I can keep it from freezing in my greenhouse but last year they lost all their leaves in winter. I’m going to try to heat the pots and run the GH warmer.
My Namwah stem that flowered in late July still hasn’t ripened. They don’t look that close to ripe even after 90 days.
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it’s because of the temperatures getting cooler. ideal temperatures for flowering and fruiting bananas is 85 or more degrees (day and night). low 80s is good but you see daily progression of flower unfolding and fruit maturing with 85+ degree days, especially with the short cycle types. in the 70s they slow down, in the 60s they drastically slow down, 50s they go dormant. i really wish i could protect them but the mystery banana is about 15-16 feet tall and the dwarf namwah about 11-12 feet tall.
have you tried potassium sulfate or langbeinite to push the fruiting process?
i asked a banana expert what mystery variety i might have, she thinks it could be tall namwah, blue java or orinoco. i think it is orinoco.
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My temperatures have been 90 high for the last three months. But lows have dropped from 60s to 50s and soon to be 40s. It’s not FL type weather here or in my greenhouse. But it’s mainly nights that are colder. I think I’ll get some fruit but not sure when.
I have applied some potassium sulfate but mainly mixed fertilizers. I should probably apply more in general.
One take away on banana is they aren’t very productive compared to other fruits. You grow a huge plant for 18 months with 40-50 monster leaves. And all you get to show for it is maybe 10-15 lbs of fruit. Fine in the tropics where there’s not much else to grow. But a questionable use of space in a greenhouse.
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Yeah as much as I want to fruit bananas here in NC just to say I have. I’ve increasingly realized it’s not a valuable use of my time and limited space. With that said I’m going to protect a couple this winter to see if I can manage to fruit them next year. After that I’m removing them all and selling the pups or something. Would rather have something productive
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That was my conclusion in my much smaller greenhouse, but I think if I had one the size of yours that I’d put a corm in the ground in a corner and let it have one fruiting p-stem and one “next year” smaller p-stem at all times. You gain that little extra vertical space by going in the ground, and by allowing one new p-stem per growing season you don’t need to wait quite so long between harvests.
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it’s definitely your night time temps. mine have slowed down because my highs are in the 80s but my lows are in the 60s.
they can take a lot of potassium when mature. i’ve only had leaf burn when i was over fertilizing them with conventional blends (15-5-30) when they were young.
i think you should try the short cycle types, they can fruit in less than a year, like my first kokopo, from planting to harvest was 6 months. my second kokopo is going to take longer because of cooler weather coming. but my plan is to dig out some pups, all of which are almost halfway through their cycle, pot them up, put them in the greenhouse and plant them in the ground in spring. i should have bananas by summer. now that i know they flower after 30 leaves, i can play around with my fertilization schedule and amounts i use to get it so i can have one fruiting each month during the warmer months. that would be the most productive method. i plan on getting veinte cohol, another short cycle type, because i am sure i can get it to flower and fruit just as fast as i did the kokopos. as for the kokopo that has produced already, i cut down the pseudostem and i am having one pup replace it, i will dig out the others. for the one pup, i will chop off the leaves before the first near freeze and wrap with thick insulating material whenever temps. go below 35F.
here is a slightly ripe kokopo banana. it’s tart/acidic like a manzano banana. the skin was still green, though a lighter green than the very firm ones.
here is a very ripe one, the skin was half black/half green and very soft and squishy. it tastes like a sweet plantain and is more orange.
i can eat so many of these because they’re so tiny.
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it definitely feels like winter now, at least at night time the past week here. we hit freezing 3 separate days now, early morning hours but briefly each time, maybe 1-3 hours each morning. the leaves are all brown from freeze damage. two orinocos are fruiting and they are tall (10 foot stems) so i am only able to protect the racks which i covered each with a frost cloth bag and a large garbage bag, big mistake with the garbage bag since it traps moisture/condensation going from day to night (it’s been in the 60s during the daytime and i was too lazy to remove since i have to climb a ladder), so the orinoco bananas got some cold and moisture damage - blackened ends from the cold and wet looking spots from moisture. i’m just going to double bag with frost cloth bags from here on. the PR plantain is flowering but the flower is still at the top of the stem and hasn’t come down yet, the outer petals might be cold damaged but i am hoping it is okay and may not come out/drop down until temperatures stay above 60s consistently, it is also too tall to protect (stem is 10 feet). the dwarf PR plantain is flowering now and the fruits are in the early stages protected by the petals and i double bagged that with frost cloth bags, so far that looks okay but there might be some cold damage that i don’t see because the fruits are in shadow from the petals. dwarf namwah #1 is fruiting and the rack is huge, i double bagged it with frost cloth bags, so far, not too bad looking. dwarf namwah #2 had put out the pre-flag leaf maybe sometime last week but the flag leaf has yet to emerge because of the cold, so i hope it stays inside all winter, but i know that won’t happen because we’ll go into the 70s often during the daytime in winter. so the dwarfs - the two namwahs and one PR plantain, before the freezes i had chopped off 2/3rds of every leaf so i could cover the tops with an extra large frost cloth bag (i wouldn’t be able to get the bags on otherwise and i left 1/3rd of the leaf in case there was a slim chance the leaves would be spared so the plant could continue photosynthesizing), not so much to protect the leaves (the leaves got burnt anyways) but to protect the racks as well as wrapping the stems with blankets, which i think helped the namwahs and PR plantain from getting cold damaged. i will see how they do as winter continues, i will continue to protect the fruiting dwarfs from top to bottom (including pups) and see how they do compared to the tall ones where i can only protect the racks (their stems and pups are unprotected as well). i don’t want to post pics until winter is over, i can’t even stand looking at them now in their sad state. oh, i almost forgot about the kokopos/patupis - i was able to harvest another rack of kokopo before the freezes, a bit premature but they all pretty much filled out and will take several weeks to ripen indoors, 8 clusters, about 120 bananas, i am happy with that bunch. i have 4 large kokopo pups in the ground, all are at least halfway through their cycle, i cut off all their leaves so i could wrap them with blankets tightly, they are all okay. but i realize i have to protect them moreso than the other types of bananas since they are the least cold hardy variety i have and have thinner stems compared to my other dwarfs. kokopo leaves get damaged in the mid or upper 30s, i think, the rest get damaged at freezing. here is a pic of kokopo rack #2 this year, 5 months planting (as a 1 foot tissue culture) to flowering and about 2 months flower to harvest.
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That’s a very nice rack of fruit for such an early variety.!
Does fruit develop OK if all leaves are killed by frost soon after flowering? My guess is the fruit will be thin/small but will it taste normal?
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ideally you want at least a few green leaves during fruit development, no green leaves means the fruit will struggle to develop. i read that the cold, meaning any temperatures below 50F, depending on length of time exposed, can cause a variety of problems including stunted fruit, blackened/rotted fruit, poor/odd tasting fruit, etc. and freezing damage is irreversible so that’s why i am trying so hard to keep the racks above freezing. once the leaves of the fruiting plant are burnt from the cold, it won’t be able to photosynthesize to allow the rack to develop but the stems are still green, so my only hope is that the stems and the covered pups of the dwarf varieties (their leaves are still green) hopefully take over photosynthesis, but i’m not sure if the pups actually do this for the mother plant. i just have to wait and see until winter is over and/or the fruit rots.
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