Oh my gosh! We have bananas forming right now, in the middle of winter! Many of you have seen my previous post about growing bananas in Sacramento County – it’s actually my most popular article lately, so apparently a bunch of you are considering it. And you should! It’s a fun plant to grow, and they have some good side benefits, like quickly growing into a privacy screen between our neighbor’s upstairs windows and our pool. Nice neighbors, for sure, but we still like a little privacy in the backyard! :)

So, I’ve been concerned all year about whether I’d been giving the banana clump the care it needs, since we hadn’t gotten any fruit yet. When we bought the one plant from “Eric the banangelist,” he said they’d fruit in their third year. That was three years ago. I had read similar statements online, too. But I also read that they need nine months of growing in a season before the fruit would form. This didn’t totally seem right, since I see some around here create fruit in August or September, and they couldn’t have been actively growing since the previous December or January.

Weird weather is helping

Well, we’re having an unusually warm winter here in northern California (with a new drought – hope it’s a short one), and my banana clump has not frozen yet. It’s gotten into the mid-30s F a few times, but no actual freezes. And lo and behold, this fruiting stem showed up on Christmas day, just like a gift, on my oldest banana stem. And yeah, after last winter’s freezes, this plant had been growing for about nine months. What do you know? I guess the interwebs were right.

That capsule-looking formation coming out between the leaf stems above is the beginning of the fruiting stem. Now, I’m crossing my fingers that we don’t have any freezes this month, even though I know it’s not great for our winter to be so warm. By the end of the coming week, we’ll be approaching 70 degrees if the forecast holds. That should help this baby grow a little faster, too. After it flowers and makes fruit, this oldest stem of the bunch will die. And that’s OK, because there are a half-dozen around it of varying age that grew from its root mass.

Here’s to some banana splits soon! Yay!