Care for Your Banana Plant
- Date added:
- Sunday, February 01, 2009
- Last revised:
- Tuesday, February 03, 2009
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Care for Your Banana Plant
The super dwarf qualities of this banana plant allow for practical in home or patio enjoyment. Create a tropical atmosphere with the most widely recognized of all tropical foliage plants. As a true Banana plant, flowering and fruit is possible but unlikely under average household conditions.
CARE: Good light, water thoroughly before wilting but never allow to sit in water, feed balanced fertilizer quarterly, protect from frost. Banana plants can fruit if a solar greenhouse or sun room that gets hot in the summer is provided. Also, moving the banana outside to the sunnies location can give fruiting results especially if the pot is planted in the ground or the pot is large enough (15-35 gallon size pot) for the plant to set fruit.
Once the fruiting stalk has produced it should be cut off, allowing the new growth coming from the soil, to grow into dominance. If more than one sprout is coming the plant can be divided. I've divided the banana plant by pulling it out of the pot and sawing or machining from the top of the soil line to the bottom, and repotting the divisions in separate pots
The first priority to consider when growing banana is to use the proper soil. It is very important to use a well draining soil MIXTURE and 20% PERLITE should be added to it to assure that you have good draining soil. Do not use heavy soils when growing banana such as potting soil, or soil from a yard.
We advise that you water and fertilize banana at the same time using any type of balanced fertilizer to help grow banana. Bananas are heavy feeders so we suggest that you fertilize very lightly each time that you water with the exception being that you do not fertilize if you are not seeing active growth.( Balanced fertilizer means - a fertilizer that has three numbers on the label ). After your initial watering we would not water again until your soil is dry to a 1/2" depth. ( Use your finger to test it ). Please do not expect this to be a plant that you "water once a week".
Grow banana in BRIGHT LIGHT. 12 hours of bright light are ideal for most varieties.
