Frittenden Gardening Society News

Bananas, in Frittenden? - 31st March 2020

Lloyd started growing Banana plants after being given a small plant as a gift in 2000.  After moving house several times, it was finally planted in the ground in 2009, but died in 2011 from frost damage.  But because the plant sends up new shoots once or twice in the summer, we have two from the original plant which were nurtured through several winters in pots in the greenhouse and then planted in 2012. 

The larger of the two is about 6feet tall, with leaves of about 7feet in length, and, at the height of summer a new leaf will appear at a rate of about 1 every fortnight.  before the first autumn frost, he cuts the leaves down to the trunk and wraps the trunk completely with geothermal material and stuff it with either leaves from the horse chestnut tree, which overhangs our garden.

To our great surprise, this year, one of the tree's flowered!  We were most shocked because it is highly unusual for a tree to flower in this country, mainly due to our climate not being hot enough but also because our summer season isn't long enough.

The flower turned into several rows of tiny bananas that have just stayed a very deep green shade, which we will eventually have to cut off.  We believe that the tree will now die back now that it has flowered, so I doubt it will still be alive once we unwrap it in the spring, but the second tree is now bigger than the first, so maybe we will see another flowering banana tree in the summer of 2016!