You may have noticed my ongoing banana saga, with my recent update about how a flower started to appear on Christmas day. Sadly, it did not survive. And it wasn’t the freeze that killed it!

On January 25th, we had a freeze that got down to about 30 degrees. I placed two radiant heaters under the banana clump with some tarps forming a little heat funnel to direct the heat up to the fruiting stem. That seemed to work. But the next day, we had a massive windstorm, and it broke that entire stem in half.

The spot where it broke is right where the oldest part of the outer stem husks end. That might be where I trimmed it after last winter froze the leaves. It makes me wonder if I should avoid cutting the stems at all after freezes and just trim off the leaves themselves, leaving more structure around the inner parts of the stem that will continue to grow. I think I’ll try that this year.

Here’s what a banana flower looks like inside

I opened up the flower pod to inspect the tiny bananas inside. They were about the size of my pinky finger. I nibbled on one but wasn’t sure if they’re OK to eat when immature. It tasted just neutral – not very banana-like. Someone on Facebook replied to my post about it and said they’re actually good to eat, but by then I’d placed it in the compost pile.

What now?

I’ve read that bananas typically fruit when the stem (pseudostem, to be precise) is three years old. Well, the next-oldest stem will be three years old this year, and I hope to get fruit from that. This has been a mild winter, with only one freeze, so most of our leaves are still green. This might give it a jump on developing fruit before next winter — they say it takes nine months of growth before the fruiting stem comes out.

BTW, I found this informative website about all things banana. More on the scientific end, so if you’re a garden nerd like me, you’ll probably appreciate it. :)