Author Topic: Dwarf Banana Dying  (Read 2342 times)

Cimmaron

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Dwarf Banana Dying
« on: February 22, 2018, 06:33:19 PM »
I've gardened for years, but am really struggling trying to grow tropical fruit indoors, so I will be posting a lot of questions! I am in zone 4/5. Last year I bought I dwarf banana that was about five inches tall. I put it in a big south facing window. My house was very humid and it thrived for the first few months. I repotted several times with a combo of sandy cactus mix and organic potting soil, fertilized regularly with an organic all-purpose fertilizer, and watched it grow. Late summer I moved to a house that is drier,cooler and does not have a south facing window. I placed it in a west facing window instead. By the end of summer it stopped growing completely and the existing leaves continued to shrivel up and turn brown. Now the poor plant just has a little bit of green at the top of the stalk, the rest of the plant is dried up. I've been spraying him with a squirt bottle and placed a heater near him. Any ideas to rescue my banana?

pineislander

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2018, 07:02:03 AM »

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2018, 09:45:16 AM »
I've gardened for years, but am really struggling trying to grow tropical fruit indoors, so I will be posting a lot of questions! I am in zone 4/5. Last year I bought I dwarf banana that was about five inches tall. I put it in a big south facing window. My house was very humid and it thrived for the first few months. I repotted several times with a combo of sandy cactus mix and organic potting soil, fertilized regularly with an organic all-purpose fertilizer, and watched it grow. Late summer I moved to a house that is drier,cooler and does not have a south facing window. I placed it in a west facing window instead. By the end of summer it stopped growing completely and the existing leaves continued to shrivel up and turn brown. Now the poor plant just has a little bit of green at the top of the stalk, the rest of the plant is dried up. I've been spraying him with a squirt bottle and placed a heater near him. Any ideas to rescue my banana?

Low humidity may well be "a" problem, but your primary problem is a lack of light. Note that supplemental lighting costs money - yes, the fixture costs money, but even more, the power costs money.  Plants gobble up sunlight.  Think of how intense it is to stare at the sun (relative to house lighting).  Plants effectively "stare at the sun" all day.  Look up any cultivation page about bananas; it'll tell you the same thing about optimal siting: "Full sun".  A little shade won't kill them, but a west-facing window - half-sun minus obstructions and glass losses (so really like 20-40% sun, aka "full shade" / deep "dappled shade") - is just not good enough.

Your options are:

1) Let the banana die
2) Give it away
3) Add lots of supplemental lighting (moderate capital costs, large recurring costs)
4) Modify your house to have larger south-facing windows (large capital costs, small recurring costs)

(Also, while we're at it, since it's indoors: check your banana for spider mites)
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 09:56:22 AM by KarenRei »
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Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2018, 12:36:18 PM »
Thanks for the advice! I'm determined to figure it out, so will work on getting some grow lights :)

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2018, 01:43:13 PM »
Thanks for the advice! I'm determined to figure it out, so will work on getting some grow lights :)

I strongly recommend LED.  Just so you know... sellers lie  ;)   Expect the lights from cheapo/no-name manufacturers to only be about half as powerful as they claim they are (you can test with a watt meter).  Expect cheap lights to be less efficient than quality lights.  Don't trust manufacturer statements about how efficient or high quality their lights are - look for a umol/J (or umol/W/s) figure, and if it's not present, assume "inefficient".  Ignore "lumens"; that's a meaningless measure for plants (the lumen scale is based on the sensitivity of the human eye). The more red in the spectrum, the more umol/J you'll get, and thus the more energy you'll give to your plants, although you have to have at least some blue to prevent excessive petiole elongation.  Some "white" (aka, other colours) in the spectrum may or may not help with hormonal triggers, but again, they'll lower umol/J.  A sign of quality for grow lights is "unusually large / heavy for its rated output" - more bulk means better heat dissipation, but also more cost to manufacture.  When you get your lights, position them relatively close to your plant; a good "rule of thumb" is that the light should feel a little bit warm on your skin - but never hot. Good light manufacturers will often give specs on how much light will be received at what distances, but cheapo manufacturers usually won't.  Your bananas would ideally like - between the windows and the grow lights - 20-30 mol/m²/d.  Reflective material (such as white cloth) around your plant can help amplify the amount of light hitting it.  Expect quality lights to cost a lot more than cheap lights, not just a little bit more.  Do the math and decide what's right for you.

Best of luck!

(And don't forget to check for mites.  Your misting at the very least is a deterrent, and as you know, bananas like moisture  :)  )
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 01:45:37 PM by KarenRei »
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Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2018, 05:47:10 PM »
Thanks for the advice! I'm determined to figure it out, so will work on getting some grow lights :)

I strongly recommend LED.  Just so you know... sellers lie  ;)   Expect the lights from cheapo/no-name manufacturers to only be about half as powerful as they claim they are (you can test with a watt meter).  Expect cheap lights to be less efficient than quality lights.  Don't trust manufacturer statements about how efficient or high quality their lights are - look for a umol/J (or umol/W/s) figure, and if it's not present, assume "inefficient".  Ignore "lumens"; that's a meaningless measure for plants (the lumen scale is based on the sensitivity of the human eye). The more red in the spectrum, the more umol/J you'll get, and thus the more energy you'll give to your plants, although you have to have at least some blue to prevent excessive petiole elongation.  Some "white" (aka, other colours) in the spectrum may or may not help with hormonal triggers, but again, they'll lower umol/J.  A sign of quality for grow lights is "unusually large / heavy for its rated output" - more bulk means better heat dissipation, but also more cost to manufacture.  When you get your lights, position them relatively close to your plant; a good "rule of thumb" is that the light should feel a little bit warm on your skin - but never hot. Good light manufacturers will often give specs on how much light will be received at what distances, but cheapo manufacturers usually won't.  Your bananas would ideally like - between the windows and the grow lights - 20-30 mol/m²/d.  Reflective material (such as white cloth) around your plant can help amplify the amount of light hitting it.  Expect quality lights to cost a lot more than cheap lights, not just a little bit more.  Do the math and decide what's right for you.

Best of luck!

(And don't forget to check for mites.  Your misting at the very least is a deterrent, and as you know, bananas like moisture  :)  )
Do you have any recommendations for brand of lights? I'm on a tight budget so don't want to pay top dollar, but I definitely want something that will be worth the money I spend.

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2018, 07:04:47 PM »
Thanks for the advice! I'm determined to figure it out, so will work on getting some grow lights :)

I strongly recommend LED.  Just so you know... sellers lie  ;)   Expect the lights from cheapo/no-name manufacturers to only be about half as powerful as they claim they are (you can test with a watt meter).  Expect cheap lights to be less efficient than quality lights.  Don't trust manufacturer statements about how efficient or high quality their lights are - look for a umol/J (or umol/W/s) figure, and if it's not present, assume "inefficient".  Ignore "lumens"; that's a meaningless measure for plants (the lumen scale is based on the sensitivity of the human eye). The more red in the spectrum, the more umol/J you'll get, and thus the more energy you'll give to your plants, although you have to have at least some blue to prevent excessive petiole elongation.  Some "white" (aka, other colours) in the spectrum may or may not help with hormonal triggers, but again, they'll lower umol/J.  A sign of quality for grow lights is "unusually large / heavy for its rated output" - more bulk means better heat dissipation, but also more cost to manufacture.  When you get your lights, position them relatively close to your plant; a good "rule of thumb" is that the light should feel a little bit warm on your skin - but never hot. Good light manufacturers will often give specs on how much light will be received at what distances, but cheapo manufacturers usually won't.  Your bananas would ideally like - between the windows and the grow lights - 20-30 mol/m²/d.  Reflective material (such as white cloth) around your plant can help amplify the amount of light hitting it.  Expect quality lights to cost a lot more than cheap lights, not just a little bit more.  Do the math and decide what's right for you.

Best of luck!

(And don't forget to check for mites.  Your misting at the very least is a deterrent, and as you know, bananas like moisture  :)  )
Do you have any recommendations for brand of lights? I'm on a tight budget so don't want to pay top dollar, but I definitely want something that will be worth the money I spend.

Do some math.  What do you pay for power - $0,14/kWh maybe?  An average LED fixture might last 50k hours.   So 1kW (true power, not nominal) of fixture - about $200 from a no-name Chinese manufacturer, or $2000 from a top-end manufacturer - will use 50000 kWh over its lifespan, or $7000. So even a small efficiency difference matters a lot. The cheapo fixture might be ~1,0-1,4 umol/J while the good fixture might be 2,1-2,7 umol/J, depending on the details and spectrum.  CFLs are 0,9-1,2 umol/J, while HPS is 1,4-1,8 umol/J. Also, in practice, the cheapo fixture might last 20k hours (or maybe just a couple thousand if it's really bad), while the good fixture might last more like 70k hours. 

Don't think just about capital costs. 

Note that HPS isn't terrible, and the fixtures are proportionally cheap.  But they have a lot of downsides, including being a concentrated heat source (more of a fire/burn/rupture risk) and regular bulb burnouts (which happen in a kind of annoying manner, in that they fade, and then become difficult to strike, and can end up in a cycle where they keep trying over and over to strike).  The light also, while "hormonally balanced", isn't as photosynthetically efficient as red.  But HPS certainly works (before LEDs, it was the go-to lighting source for indoor cultivation, and still makes up the majority of the market - although LED eats away its market share more every year).  One advantage to HPS (and especially fluorescent) over red/blue LED is that it's easier to inspect your plants.  With red-blue, I recommend shutting off your lights regularly to examine your plants, because under red-blue leaves just look black... it's hard to see nutrient deficiencies, pest damage, necrosis, etc.

As for manufacturers, there's so many.  A good place to start might be to search "site:reddit.com LED umol/J", as there's some really active groups discussing grow lights over there. It might give you a good jumping-off point for manufacturers.

As for what to use, I use a mixture of fixtures of different types (although nowadays overwhelmingly LED) and qualities.  There's no simple answer.  But I want to make sure that you take the long-term picture into account and don't just think about upfront costs.  Determine your square meters, determine how many mol/m²/d you want to deliver to that area, pick your light type with respect to *all* factors and what sort of umol/J (aka umol/W/s) you can expect, decide how many hours you want your lights on per day, then the wattage you'll need is "W = (mol/m²/d) * 1000000umol/mol * m² / (3600s/h * (h/d)) / (umol/W/s)".  So, for example, if you want to add half sun (~15 mol/m²/d) to what the plants get through the window, and do that over 1 square meter, for 12 hours per day, using a 2,2 umol/J fixture: (15 mol/m²/d) * 1000000umol/mol * 1m² / (3600s/h * (12 h/d)) / (2,2 umol/W/s) = 158W.  :)  Note that you can get by on smaller fixtures if you run them for more hours per day.  Note that long photoperiods can prevent flowering in short-day plants, and CAM plants don't like it in general, but most plants seem to do well with long photoperiods, if you're looking to cut capital costs.
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sahai1

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #7 on: February 23, 2018, 08:03:17 PM »
you should cut off all the green above the corm, if that isn't growing, it will eventually be rotting and spread to the corm.  Some corms just aren't large enough to regrow, especially if they have failed a few times or have gone dormant too long.

Daily watering is plenty for a banana tree, just make sure it is full draining, check the dirt of the bottom of the container to see if it is dry by the next watering.

Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #8 on: February 23, 2018, 09:23:21 PM »
Thank you KarenRei! I'll do some more research and see what I can find!

Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #9 on: February 23, 2018, 09:26:13 PM »
you should cut off all the green above the corm, if that isn't growing, it will eventually be rotting and spread to the corm.  Some corms just aren't large enough to regrow, especially if they have failed a few times or have gone dormant too long.

Daily watering is plenty for a banana tree, just make sure it is full draining, check the dirt of the bottom of the container to see if it is dry by the next watering.

The whole "trunk" is brown, in fact everything is brown except a little green at the base of the top leaf. Should I cut the whole thing back to the corm for the best chance of saving it?

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2018, 02:29:37 AM »
If you don't have another pup I'd be hesitant. 

When you say brown, you don't mean rot, you just mean dead leaves, right?
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Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2018, 11:00:50 AM »
If you don't have another pup I'd be hesitant. 

When you say brown, you don't mean rot, you just mean dead leaves, right?

That is correct

sahai1

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2018, 09:30:27 PM »
If it isn't growing, then the main 'heart' is dead.  Another tree can grow right up through that same trunk with a new heart, however it will have to wait for the top to soften up and rot before it can push through.  Suckers popping off the sides are usually much healthier than the new trees trying to break out of the same trunk as an old tree.  Cutting off will not have any negative effects, but one positive effect is the tree will give up on that shoot and go for a new shoot, or it will have nothing in it's way to push up a new shoot in the same trunk.

you should cut off all the green above the corm, if that isn't growing, it will eventually be rotting and spread to the corm.  Some corms just aren't large enough to regrow, especially if they have failed a few times or have gone dormant too long.

Daily watering is plenty for a banana tree, just make sure it is full draining, check the dirt of the bottom of the container to see if it is dry by the next watering.

The whole "trunk" is brown, in fact everything is brown except a little green at the base of the top leaf. Should I cut the whole thing back to the corm for the best chance of saving it?

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2018, 06:37:28 AM »
If it isn't growing, then the main 'heart' is dead.

That's not necessarily true. Bananas can stop growing for many reasons, and by far the most probable one here is the significant lack of light; growth takes energy.  The corm is almost certainly energy-starved.  If he cuts off the current stalk then there's no guarantee that it'll have the energy to send a new one up.

I've seen these symptoms several times from indoor bananas that got overgrown by other plants, blocking off light.  It's a slow decline from a starved corm, not rot.  Cutting off the stalk will just hasten the process; making a new stalk takes energy that the corm doesn't have.
« Last Edit: February 25, 2018, 07:50:40 AM by KarenRei »
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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #14 on: February 25, 2018, 06:41:34 AM »
🗯
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 06:19:59 PM by Frog Valley Farm »

Cimmaron

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #15 on: February 25, 2018, 12:48:25 PM »
Looks like a lot of different opinions! The center of the trunk is still green, but the leaves are completely brown and dried up. It doesn't seem to be even trying to make new leaves.

KarenRei

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Re: Dwarf Banana Dying
« Reply #16 on: February 25, 2018, 07:04:47 PM »
You know, you can do a stopgap lighting solution with a standard CFL or household LED bulb, if you happen to have a lamp you can allocate until you get a proper grow light.  I'm sure your banana would appreciate not having to wait  ;)  Just remember - the light shouldn't feel any more than mildly warm on your skin; if it feels hot on your skin, the bulb is too close.
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