Raja Puri dwarf banana flowering

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My Raja Puri dwarf banana is flowering.

I think this is the best banana for people who want to grow them outside, but need to protect them from a little frost now and then. Raja Puri fruit is delicious, much better than store-bought Cavenish bananas, but also smaller. I think it compares favorably with the Ice Cream banana, considered the best by many people. Ice Cream is a very large plant I could not fruit here without a greenhouse, because it is too big to protect during our winters.

The base of a Raja Puri inflorescence is at about nipple level for a man 5' 11" / 180cm tall, and it hangs down to dog level. A normal flowering produces 6 hands of 12 bananas each. This dwarf plant is easier to protect from frost than standard varieties.

I grow it in the bed right beside my front door, under a wide eave and against a picture window. It faces north by northwest. It gets afternoon summer sun, but is mostly shaded in the winter, when it is dormant. This is a great exposure here; bananas burn in our summer sun. In the winter I drape frost cloth from the roof down over the plant. The heat from the window and front door are enough to keep it above freezing.

I drain my high-efficiency washing machine into a barrel, and use a hand truck to move it outside. I use the water on the beds in front of my house. Bananas are heavy nitrogen feeders, almost impossible to burn with fertilizer. I try to give this one a pound / 456 grams of ammonium sulfate per week during its growing season. I sprinkle it on the bed just before I water. Bananas don't use water in cool weather, so I don't need to water in the winter.

Those of you in places where there is minimal frost could grow this easily. This includes places like Austin, the Gulf Coast of the US, southern Florida, southern Europe and almost anywhere in the tropics.

You can read more about bananas at the California Rare Fruit Growers.

[DeaC]

Your garden sounds quite exotic! Have you tried using the leaves as cooking "pots"?

[No-Pro-mwa]

Cool, I wish I could grow things like this.

[AndreaK]

My banana plants have outgrown there pots. I need to give them more room. Any suggestions on a mix for them? Right now they are just in Miracle grow potting mix. Mid - Mo weather requires bringing them in for the winter.The mother plant bloomed 6 years ago and we had a plentiful crop of tiny bananas.

[Leafmite]

Fantastic!
I don't really have the room for a Musa but a little over twenty years ago, I found a varigated dwarf Musa (no idea what it is) and bought it. It grows in a pot too small to really ever get large enough to produce bananas...which is fine. It is a favorite, anyway.

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Bananas don't seem to care much about soil mix. They can't tolerate being cold and wet.

There has been for decades a banana cult in Missouri. If you drive around SL or Springfield in the summer you will see houses with big clumps of bananas in the front lawn.

In the fall they have a banana party. Some people wait until the first frost damages the leaves, but not everybody. They invite all their friends. They undermine the clump, slide a big tarp under the clump, and drag it into the basement. The banana clump spends the winter near a window but with no water.

In the spring they have another banana party, but they drag the clump up out of the basement and put it back in the front lawn.

The people I know who do this say they are happy to share banana shoots with people who stop and ask. That's how most of them joined the cult.

[Tindomul]

What if one of your bananas fall on one of your cactii? LOL. Nice one. I can't believe it takes that much fertilizer!!!

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One problem with dwarf bananas - the clusters hang at dog mouth height. Banana sap stains anything it touches black, including clothing, skin, machetes and dog teeth.

Dogs also greatly relish dates and guavas. They will stand under a tree or bush waiting for them to fall.

[Leafmite]

My American Eskimo will pick and eat raspberries, black raspberries, fresh blueberries and tomatoes. She really loves the fresh fruit!

I just bought a Super Dwarf Cavendish. I think it is still going to want to get too large to produce fruit for me but I thought I would give it a try.

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Bananas generally fruit after making 2-3 full-sized (for that variety) growths. By that time the underground corm is big enough that all future shoots you don't thin out will fruit.

The trick to fruiting is to keep them at 3 growths once they are big enough to fruit: the one fruiting this year, the one fruiting next year, and a little one for the following year. It's fine to let a new plant run wild and make lots of shoots and top growth, because this builds up the corm faster. But then you have to be ruthless with thinning.

I would guess a super dwarf Cavendish should fruit in a 5-gallon / 20 liter pot. The key will be lots of nitrogen fertilizer.

Bananas in cultivation die from overwatering far more often than underwatering, especially right after transplanting. Sounds like another group of monocots we all know.