Garden and Yard Talk

Moved a clump of banana plants this afternoon. Hopefully with more sun and being in a spot we see most days (and thus getting watered during dry periods) they'll produce more than they've been doing so far in the old spot (practically nothing) where they're in the shade most of the day, and out of sight, thus out of mind. 1 clump came out as three separate plants/mini clumps.

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bananas want lots of light and water. they will grow here in portland but they never produce fruit. we don't have good enough soil for them.
 
fooferdoggie said:
bananas want lots of light and water. they will grow here in portland but they never produce fruit. we don't have good enough soil for them.
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My MIL grows a couple of Thai varieties, one that grows to easily 4m (13'), the biggest ones are probably 6m (~20'). People always go on about how fast bamboo grows and how hard it is to get rid of - I'd choose to get rid of bamboo over those Thai bananas any day.

These ones are, I believe just Cavendish or some very similar variety (they just seem like a 'regular' banana to me), and generally do OK here, so long as - as you say - they get enough water and sun. No where near as quick to produce fruit, but when they do well even a single plant produces more than we can eat in time, so the excess gets frozen to make smoothies.
 
Stephen.R said:
My MIL grows a couple of Thai varieties, one that grows to easily 4m (13'), the biggest ones are probably 6m (~20'). People always go on about how fast bamboo grows and how hard it is to get rid of - I'd choose to get rid of bamboo over those Thai bananas any day.
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I’m one of those people who love bamboo. I got used to it when we lived in Taiwan, and have missed it over the years. We recently stayed in a B&B in Florida that had beautiful high stands of bamboo and I felt so connected. I’d love to plant it at home and replace the fence!
 
Alli said:
I’m one of those people who love bamboo. I got used to it when we lived in Taiwan, and have missed it over the years. We recently stayed in a B&B in Florida that had beautiful high stands of bamboo and I felt so connected. I’d love to plant it at home and replace the fence!
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Yup yup. I'm quite obsessed with it.

Definitely need to be smart about it though. As much as it's easier (IMO) to get rid of bamboo (fire works well) than those fucking banana plants, that really says more about how deep the 'core' of the banana plant goes and their ability to recover from seemingly anything, than it does about how easy it is to get rid of bamboo.
 
Alli said:
I’m one of those people who love bamboo. I got used to it when we lived in Taiwan, and have missed it over the years. We recently stayed in a B&B in Florida that had beautiful high stands of bamboo and I felt so connected. I’d love to plant it at home and replace the fence!
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I do like to see some kind of hedgerow plantings over just utility fencing, that's for sure.
 
My wife decided to plant up a bunch of pots, and although we’ve had pots in the past, they were in the sprinkler zone, and these plants typically send roots down though the drainage holes into the dirt so they don’t need as much watering as if they were just reliant on moisture in the pot. The new pots sit on the deck and need watering every other day. Then there are these small hanging baskets which are at the mercy of the Sun. We are relying more on succulents, than in the past.

A nice lady at a local garden center, gave me some cuttings of stapelia, succulents similar to cactus but minus the needles. I just stuck them in some dirt and they grew.

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Stapelia left and right with turquoise rocks.

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not my picture​
Alli said:
I’m one of those people who love bamboo. I got used to it when we lived in Taiwan, and have missed it over the years. We recently stayed in a B&B in Florida that had beautiful high stands of bamboo and I felt so connected. I’d love to plant it at home and replace the fence!
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I think bamboo is beautiful too. The only caveat is that if planted in the ground, it can be highly invasive and will send roots into lawn areas, which can be a pain. Some neighbors when growing up had a stand of bamboo try to take over their back yard, a nightmare.
 
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Stephen.R said:
Moved a clump of banana plants this afternoon. Hopefully with more sun and being in a spot we see most days (and thus getting watered during dry periods) they'll produce more than they've been doing so far in the old spot (practically nothing) where they're in the shade most of the day, and out of sight, thus out of mind. 1 clump came out as three separate plants/mini clumps.

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Where do you live? The neighbors banana plants here in Texas survived the 12F event.. :)
 
DT said:
Definitely, here I am at the neighbor's house ...


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When we lived on Guam we started a row of coconut palms by half burying a line of coconuts In the dirt, which there was very poor on the base (NAS Agana). Also had some plumeria bushes, but I don’t think those can stand freezing, thinking of Houston. After the extra cold snap last Feb, all the palm trees in the area are coming back to life.
 
I'm learning tomatoes can be kind of an asshole plant. After over a month of my tomatoes not ripening and seeming more interested in growing to the size of pumpkins I did some research. I learned if the temperature goes outside a certain range that's just what they'll do. They'll put energy into growing more branches, leafs, and new tomatoes instead of ripening what is already there. So I cut back some new growth and hopefully that will inspire it to step in line.
 
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Chew Toy McCoy said:
I'm learning tomatoes can be kind of an asshole plant. After over a month of my tomatoes not ripening and seeming more interested in growing to the size of pumpkins I did some research. I learned if the temperature goes outside a certain range that's just what they'll do. They'll put energy into growing more branches, leafs, and new tomatoes instead of ripening what is already there. So I cut back some new growth and hopefully that will inspire it to step in line.
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They like hot right?
 
Huntn said:
They like hot right?
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That's what I thought but apparently there's such a thing as too hot and too hot is something like the low 80's.

There's also a chance they aren't getting enough hours of sun but I can't do much about that. They are on the edge of my balcony and the way my balcony is in relationship to the sun this time of year only provides about 5 hours of direct sunlight. That will improve after the end of this month as the sun gets lower in the sky.
 

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