Best Cold Hardy Banana Varieties?

[BeachGardener9a]

I am specifically looking for varieties that grow well in the northwest Florida region Zone 9A.

Varieties like:
Dwarf Namwa
Tall Namwa
Dwarf Brazilian
Raja Puri
Dwarf Kokopo/Patupi
Pisang Ceylon (Improved Mysore)
Dwarf Orinoco
Tall Orinoco
Blue Java (real)
SH-3640 (High Noon)

What varieties am I missing?

[BestDay]

Goldfinger is a good one. Taste is similar to Dwarf Brazilian but a little sweeter. And it doesn’t need propping.

Bill

[BeachGardener9a]

Does anyone sell any of these varieties?

[BeyondOrganicLife]

I'd like to add saba to the list. Very cool weather tolerant as well as drought tolerant and poor soil tolerant. Also a very tasty banana. But absolutely massive plant. In my experience dwarf orinoco and saba have been my most reliable producers.

[BP]

Cool thread. Can you zone push any of these to 8b?

[BeachGardener9a]

I'd like to add saba to the list. Very cool weather tolerant as well as drought tolerant and poor soil tolerant. Also a very tasty banana. But absolutely massive plant. In my experience dwarf orinoco and saba have been my most reliable producers.

What other varieties do you grow? Interested in your experience.

[botanical pilot]

Cool thread. Can you zone push any of these to 8b?

I'm no banana expert, but I think getting them to fruit outside a greenhouse in the PNW would be very difficult. I chatted with a researcher a while back who was working on a hardy banana variety (I'm trying to find that paper and email exchange again, but this was like 10 years ago) that was fruiting in zone 8b in the South. He couldn’t give me any plants to trial up north, unfortunately, but he doubted that even this somewhat exceptional banana would get enough heat to fruit up here. It just stays warmer down south for longer.

In Portland, I’ve seen a couple of bananas in bloom (probably Basjoo) but always at the very tail end of summer. I suspect we might be able to get some of the hardier varieties to flower, but actually setting fruit would be the real challenge. I would be very happy to be wrong though if anyone has better information or experience!

While looking for that old paper, I found two others you might think are interesting, too.
"A Novel Banana Mutant “RF 1” (Musa spp. ABB, Pisang Awak Subgroup) for Improved Agronomic Traits and Enhanced Cold Tolerance and Disease Resistance"
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2021.730718/full

"A review on adaptation of banana (Musa spp.) to cold in subtropics"
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pbr.13088

[Lauta_hibrid]

I'm from La Plata, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. Here, since the 1970s, a variety of banana has become fashionable that actually bears fruit. It tolerates winter frosts, although the fruit can be damaged if it flowers near winter. It belongs to the Blugooe ABB group. My recommendation is to stop fertilizing after summer to avoid stimulating flowering in autumn. In my experience, the Mysore variety also flowered and fruited.