Bunch was about 45-50 pounds.

Are those plantains?  Looks like a nice set of hands there, do you do Saba the Philipine dessert plantain?  If not you should look for it, small fat and so delicious when wrapped in spring roll wrappers and fried in butter and cane sugar.

Chivas,

No they are bananas, variety is Ice cream.

Very nice. Envious of your climate, Charles

wow. That's great.
How long does it take for the plant to produce Bananas?
I hope to be in Florida by the end of the year.
Vito

That's it, Charles!  I'm moving in with you!  The ice cream is the one banana I've been really wanting to try.

Martin,

They taste like Vanilla icecream.  They really do......



Vito,

About 2 years I guess.  The first year the pup comes out of the ground and grows up to about 15 feet.  The second year it goes up to 20 feet or so and flowers.   Takes about 4-5 months after the flower blooms before the bananas are ripe.  As soon as the first hand at the top starts to turn yellow (you can see it in the pic) you cut the bunch off and hang it and each hand will ripen in turn.  The stalk only produces 1 bunch then dies but there are 10 or so allowed to grow at any given time so you always get a couple bunches a year.  If you look carefully you can see the flower in the picture.

The banana in front of the big one is a dwarf cavendish.  




And in keeping with the forum there is a fig plant in the picture:)  

Will, that's great, brother!  Nice job!  I've been growing DC's and a Williams Hybrid.  Since I'm limited on space and growing in containers, I've been sticking to the dwarf varieties but I hear the Ice Creams are the best tasting!

That is so beautiful.... I am going to attempt growing a Red Iholena this year. It's my first attempt at growing a banana tree. They are supposed to taste like peaches. Do you do anything special for them in the way of fertilization ?.... Nice fig tree too.

Pretty neat, might have to get a 'nanner tree or two.

Charles

I have about 10 Brazilian banana trees I grow in pots. I've had them for 10 years but never really tried to get fruit. They grow like weeds when I put them in ground in the summer

my maternal grandfather had a banana tree in korea.. that think never gave banana. then again.. who would want to grow banana in korea? we have few people with banana tree around here. never see banana on them. 

I am glad to see that the dwarf cavendish doesn't get too tall, I have one in a pot so I will hope that maybe next year I can get some bananas.  I have been known to put fish fish fertilizer concentrate on the fibre banana that is planted outside and all it did was make it grow faster.

Wills, thanks for sharing that. Truly awesome that anything could grow like that, I had no idea bannanas were a biannual. So, I'm guessing that multiple plants are growing in that clump and you don't have to actually remove that thing every other year to make room for the pups(just cut out the dead stalks at the base) right?
One of the things that I will probably never get grow, I really appreciate threads like these.

Joe,

I did not know that.


Calvin,

Not a true biannual.....in the tropics the process probably takes a year.   If you grew it up north it could take 5+ years.....all depends.  As a rule the plant puts out a fairly set amount of leaves then it flowers.  Sometimes they flower at the wrong time and are lost....I do get freezes here, 1-5 a year.  That bunch is big but the bananas themselves should have been much longer, same size as grocery store bananas but the leaves got fried off this winter.  The bananas still ripen though but won't get any bigger with no leaves to push them.  

Right....when I cut the stalk down I just chunk it up and throw it back in the clump.  It is a couple hundred pounds worth of stem.  They actually make too many pups so have to kill a few off to keep the numbers down.  Basically you have the king, or queen if you prefer...an heir and a spare.  So you have the big guy a smaller 10' high right next to it and a small pup.  There are 3 mains in that clump....bananas prefer to be in a clump and don't do so well by themselves.

I love that picture of your banana plant. Makes me want to move south.  I have three velutina (Pink banana) seedlings in cups right now.   And yes keeping with the forum there are figs in the picture.  

Thanks! Very informative.