winter update - namwah #1 (flowered Nov. 4th) is not doing so hot, it looked okay (surprisingly) after the week of deep freezes in January, and i had about 3 weeks of springtime temps. in February, where it was in the 70s and even low 80s during the daytime. but the fungus is spreading and many bananas are getting what looks like cigar end rot, besides the black spots and wet/brown spots.
i am not sure what to do. should i cut off the rotting ones and wait or do i cut the whole rack, dispose of the blackened ones and hope the normal ones ripen on the counter? i am afraid if i wait, then the whole rack is going to rot, since the fungus is traveling up the rachis and peduncle. this is from tissue culture and supposedly tissue culture is disease free. i guess not.
namwah #2 (flowered December 19th) looks okay so far. how it will develop with no leaves, i don’t know.
I’ve ripened two bunches of Namwah that flowered the end of July. Very unimpressive so far. The fruits bruise if you look at them. Ripens mushy. Taste is below commercial banana.
My late rack is about where yours is at. It flowered the end of October. Plant does have some leaves left so somewhat better than your setup.
i’ve only had commercially grown namwah and they take a long time to ripen, i let them get some black on them, and they are very dense and chewy, more acidic and sweeter than regular bananas and last longer on the counter than store bought cavendish/grand nain bananas. overall i think the taste is better than a regular banana. i keep hearing about how it’s the best tasting variety but i don’t think so. i like the taste of morado better and kokopo/patupi so far has been the best. i recently tried hua moa and that’s good, better than store bought. worst banana i’ve ever had is orinoco. i recently acquired a raja puri so i am looking forward to trying that.
this is rack #2, my christmas bananas, still hanging on. they haven’t fully filled out/plumped up due cold stress from the winter but they fared better than the first rack, and don’t have black spots on them. they’ve been on for almost 6 months, so i’ll give them til the 6 month mark and cut them down to ripen indoors. the first rack i harvested in April because they were turning black and i brought indoors to ripen and they were only slightly sweet, didn’t taste that good. i’m hoping this second rack tastes better.
this was the result of namwah #1, i harvested the rack in April because it was turning black and wasn’t developing anymore. it was not as well protected as namwah #2 and suffered from more cold damage. they stayed small, they grew but didn’t elongate much and they never plumped up, they didn’t even turn upwards, they were just stuck in development because of cold damage.
this is namwah #2, which i just harvested the other day. this flowered a few days before Christmas, but because the flower didn’t open up until about a week after the major freezes i had in January, it was better protected. but you can still see they did not fully plump out at the distal ends, the top hands filled out more than the bottom hands. these are longer and much fatter and just more developed than the bananas from namwah #1. i also tried one that i picked a few days ago and the taste is sweeter than the first rack.
both namwahs had pups with leaves, without which, the bananas probably would not have developed at all. namwah #1 had flowered in early November, leaves were cut in late November for winter prep, the flower was absolutely huge when it emerged. namwah #2 that flowered in the latter part of December had no leaves since they were already cut in late November so the flower that emerged was much smaller than namwah #1. but both of them produced 10 hands each, 16 bananas per hand.
This is my second bunch of namwah. This one flowered late October. The plant lost 80% of it’s leaves during winter. But the bunch is filling out nicely and the fruit is bigger and plumper than the bunch that flowered three months earlier and ripened this spring.
The tips are plumping up and going from dark green to lighter green. I think these will be ripe in the next month or two.
nice! but it doesn’t look like they will plump up any more, so you should harvest it now. 6 months is usually the maximum. all the flowers/modified leaves are spent even before then. they do take a long time to develop if it’s not warm enough. under normal (tropical) conditions, it should only take 3-3.5 months from inflorescence to harvest. i had the same thing happen to my first rack, the wet looking spots at the ends are from cold damage. how tall is the stem? i have never seen bananas fruiting in a pot. home growers (in Florida) keep saying they’re the best tasting bananas, so i’m going to wait til i have ones that fruit in the summer before i can really compare, since winter bananas are suboptimal in flavor. i ended up feeding most of the first rack back to my banana plants. nothing goes to waste!
Harvest now? I thought Richard said you should wait until the first fruit starts to turn yellow. Either way I wish I could share a hand with anyone that wants some. I have no use for a hundred banana over a couple of weeks.
most people wait for them to turn yellow on the stem. i don’t. here’s why - i can’t eat over 150 bananas in a week nor do i have room in my freezer for that. so i prefer to cut when plumped out but still green that way i can ripen some hands outdoors and keep the rest indoors to ripen slowly over time. namwahs keep better than regular store bought bananas anyways. i will end up giving several hands away and/or making banana bread (to probably also give away).
I’m interested to see how you do with this! I’m in a pretty similar climate, but I feel based on your description that maybe you get a little bit more of both cold and heat.
I have 3 banana plants that were damaged pretty good by frost but did survive. We did not get any snow but did get a little bit of frost maybe 2 to 3 nights. I had 3 citrus trees right near the bananas that I protected by wrapping with incandescent Christmas lights and then covering with sheets. They died below the graft. The bananas which I didn’t think to protect looked dead but survived.
I’ve not personally had them fruit, but my neighbor has a banana in her yard that just put out a flower about 2 weeks ago. I don’t know what cultivar. She doesn’t do very much with them so it’s rather neglected and very unprotected from wind and cold. I think with the dieback I might not have any chance of fruit this year, but that’s ok. Without an unusual cold spell they’d all be bigger and honestly I’m not too sure what to do when they do get ready to fruit!
what is your winter hardiness zone and your heat zone? heat hours is more important than hardiness (at least for me), because even though i can get very cold (into the upper teens/low 20s), it doesn’t stay that temperature for long (usually deep freezes happen for only a few nights in the winter), though freezing temps. do occur mainly in late December and more often in January, however, sometimes i can get 70 degree temps in early winter (December) and 80 degree temps in late winter (February) so i do see minimal growth in the winter. banana leaves only grow when temperatures are above 60F, they will grow very slowly when temps are in the 60s and fastest when 80F or more (assuming ample water, nutrients, light, humidity, etc.). fruit needs consistent 80+ degree temps (ideally 85F) to develop and mature at the same rate as that in the tropics, otherwise it will take a very long time. because bananas need a lot of heat hours, moreso the short cycle and cold sensitive varieties. depending on the variety, damage can occur above freezing, in the mid to upper 30s for cold sensitive varieties.
do you have more pictures of the first rack, flower, rachis, pseudostem and entire plant? did the seller verify that it is namwah? i’ve gotten wrong bananas before. because the way you described the taste doesn’t sound like namwah, namwah is very dense and chewy. if underdeveloped, then the taste is bland, starchy, and seedy, but still very firm and dense, not mushy. they start off very rectangular, like piano keys when young but eventually get conical with a distinct pointed tip when mature which gives them an asymmetrical look.
here’s mine, top hands:
Mine aren’t pointy like that at the tips. I guess it’s something else. Don’t remember where I got it, but it was a tiny plant. So, it was purchased.
I also have a Dwarf Brazilian ripening now. It’s fruits are smaller. I ate the first one not fully ripe and it was OK. Not very sweet yet. I should have ripe fruit of both soon.
Going by this that you posted my heat zone would be a 9 I believe. I’m in zone 9B. I think the specific area where the bananas are planted is probably a bit hotter though. It seems to get about no air-flow there being boxed in by a fence on two sides, hedge on the third and bordering the house and generally feels hotter.
I do fertilize them, but probably not quite as often as they’d like. I don’t feel a rush to get them to fruit on any real schedule, but if they are successful I’d probably try and learn a little more to get them to something like a yearly production cycle if possible.
Bought Kokopo, Patupi Dwarf (left) and Double Mahoi dwarf (right) from Everglades Farm. I hope they are the plants as advertised. I see variegation on the Double Mahoi. Is that an identifier for that variety?
Now that I have a small greenhouse, I have somewhere to house them on cold winter days and nights. I was able to keep the greenhouse at the mid-50’s this past winter for light freeze nights.
PS…I’m in alignment (literally) with this thread name…I am at 30.04° north latitude in Louisiana.
All young leaves will have that look of all banana varieties I’m aware of. After 6-7 leaves they all become green. All 4 varieties I have are like that on all pups
@fruitnut curious to see what type you have, sometimes tissue culture is not true to type or mislabelled.
@Thark if you have a warm microclimate for them they should do okay
@Shibumi & @Gkight wine spots are common on cavendish (AAA) types, i have truly tiny and i had super dwarf and they have them but eventually lose them as they mature, wine spots also occur on young puerto rican (common) plantain (AAB). wine spots do NOT occur on kokopo, namwah, orinoco, raja puri, if it does it is very rare.
i waited til these little namwahs got some black on the skin, this seems to be the perfect ripeness, it’s sweet, dense, chewy, and tastes better than regular store bananas. very slight acidity to balance the sweetness. that may be why i don’t like store bananas, they don’t have any acidity to counter the sweetness. the skin is very thin. these are smaller than store bought namwahs which are much bigger and fatter.
The tips of mine are pictured in post 67. They don’t have a pointed tip. So they’re something else. They go from green to mush in one day. At least the first bunch was that way. I expect this second bunch to be the same way.
The dwarf Brazilian looks more like yours. Here’s a picture of questionable namwah the bigger still green ones and dwarf Brazilian fruits.
The Brazilian fruits are firm, somewhat sweet, with slight acidity at that yellow color. Not better than store bought but much better than the unknown. The DB may get better when they ripen more. They’ve just now turned yellow.
My Kokopo have them, but Orinoco and blue Java do not. I had misremembered them having them but just examined their pups and you’re right they are absent. But what kokopo I have are loaded in them, I’m open to having a mislabeled plant, could very well be dwarf cavendish as well.
