Progress of the musa mekong giant "itinerans"

I tried purchasing musa mekong giant last year however they never made it through the winter when I tried planting them outside. The appeared to still be alive by the spring time however too much moisture in the spring must have killed them out so I ended up ordering a couple more of them from eBay this spring. Here's the links to when I tried them last fall.
http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-banana-plants-musa-mekong-giant.html

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/10/fall-update-on-banana-plants-2.html

I bought them as tiny plants in 2 inch pots some time in April of this year to replace the ones I lost last fall.

3 May 2012

Plant 1 on the right, and plant 2 on the left.

Growing angled luffa (loofah) gourds from seed

By around late May of this spring, I planted a few luffa (chinese okra) seeds in the ground, and eventually only 2 of them survived until maturity, but here's a complete picture documentation of the 4 months of progress since they were planted. I may have been able to get harvests faster if I started them indoors under a strong metal halide, but that's OK because I'm still able to get over 100 fruits per plant. The key to getting heavy yields is tons of water, lots of space for crawling, and good fertilizer. I fertilizer with manure, compost, and azomite. These plants produce lots of vines and take up a lot of space.

9 June 2012: Just barely coming out