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Saturday, August 13, 2011

Summer updates on the musa basjoos and gunneras

Now that it is near the middle of August, both my bananas and gunneras are close to their height for the year. The Musa basjoos are probably a bit over 6ft, and might gain another 2ft, and the gunneras are done growing their leaves and should only increase the size of their corms for the rest of the year to store food for next year.

This is the banana plant that had a corm that survived.

Here's the one that died back to the ground which seems to have a smaller main stem, but larger pups, and more proliferation which is likely because the main stem took too long to start drawing the energy from it's corm.

Both plants together
From a distance
Here's the main gunnera, just a bit larger than it was last year. I take divisions off every year to prevent it from looking too crowded and invading the other plants.


Here's it's flower stalk. I doubt the seeds are that viable since I don't ever see seedlings all over the place.




Here are a couple pictures of the division that I took in the spring and put in a 15 gallon container. I did this just as an experiment to see how well it would grow in a very large container.



2 comments:

  1. The basjoo's look very healthy... I didn't get much growth on my end with all this drought and HEAT (who'd have thought high heat slows basjoo growth?) especially since I haven't been around much to water them daily...

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  2. Oddly they have accelerated their growth lately, and the taller one is now, a few inches above 8ft and still getting taller with each leaf that unfolds. I only put a soaker hose when it doesn't rain for many days straight on it, but I'll have to plant the rest of my bananas pretty soon so they can root out.

    Mine are also 1ft below the soil surface so they might get some of the water from below.

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