I have a small, red-leaved banana plant. I am going to give it
to my daughter in Iowa. What is the best care she can give besides full
sun and moisture? What kind of dirt is best for replanting it and what
kind of fertilizer should I feed it?
You are correct that Ensete ventricosum (Red banana) needs moisture and
sun to thrive. The information I found about this plant indicates that it
is not too particular about type of soil, but it is definitely
frost-tender. Does your daughter plan to overwinter the banana in a
greenhouse or other sheltered spot? The Missouri Botanical Garden
site linked below suggests applying fertilizer during the growing season,
but does not mention a particular type of fertilizer. (See last link
below for more anecdotal information on fertilizer.)
Missouri Botanical Garden has useful information on growing Ensete. Below is an excerpt.
Winter hardy to USDA Zones 10-11. In St. Louis, plants may be grown
outdoors during the growing season (either directly in the ground or in
containers), but must be brought indoors for overwintering or they will
not survive. Plants are best grown in organically rich, medium moisture,
well-drained soil in full sun. Plants tolerate and often appreciate some
part shade or light filtered sun in the heat of the day. Plants need
consistently moist soils that do not dry out. Fertilize plants regularly
during growing season. Site plants in areas protected from strong winds
which can severely damage the large leaves. For containers, use a
well-drained potting soil mix. Keep container soils consistently moist
but not wet. In St. Louis, outdoor plants must be overwintered indoors,
either in a sunroom/greenhouse or by forcing plants into dormancy.
Options for overwintering include:
- Bring container plant indoors in
fall before first frost and place container in a large sunny room for
overwintering as a houseplant, with reduced water and fertilization;
- If container plant is too large to bring inside as a houseplant, cut
foliage back to 6-8″ in fall after first frost, and store container in a
cool, dark, frost-free corner of the basement until spring, with periodic
addition of a touch of moisture as needed in winter to prevent the soils
from totally drying out;
- If container plant is too heavy or too large
to bring inside, remove plant from container in fall before first frost,
wrap roots in plastic and store in a cool, dark, frost-free corner of the
basement until spring (foliage may be trimmed back or left on the plant
and allowed to brown up in the normal course);
- If growing plants
directly in the ground, dig, wrap roots, trim back the leaves and store
as in option #3 above. After flowering and fruiting, the pseudostem dies.
Propagate by seed or tissue culture.
The Plants for a Future database also has information on growing this plant.
There is information on fertilizing on the site of the Northwest Palms forum (no longer available online). Excerpt:
I promised in a thread a while back that I would post the fertilizer I
use for feeding my Ensete ventricosum maurelii. Here’s what I typically
do:
The plants get set out in mid May. They have been dormant in the unheated
basement since November. When they were dug up they had all their leaves
cut off except the central growing one. The root ball gets covered with
plastic to help keep moisture in. Over the winter they have lost a lot of
their water but are still succulent and ready to put on new growth
(usually they are already growing before being set out). Their root ball
was kept small to make storage easier and they were watered sparingly and
kept just barely moist for their period of dormancy. Last year the
biggest plant was over 300 pounds (without leaves!) when dug up, but it
will have lost about a third of that weight by the time it is planted
out.
We plant them into areas of the yard where the soil is 100% compost. They
get put in planting holes that have about 6 cups of pelleted shake/feed
fertilizer (24-8-16 or similar) mixed into the bottom of the planting
hole as well as a good sprinkling of pelleted micronutrients, iron and
magnesium. But that’s just the start…
After planting, they are generously watered in with transplant fertilizer
and top dressed with manure or SeaSoil or both. Then, I wait for full-on
new growth to start. As soon as it does, the bananas get fertilized
weekly. I use urea (46-0-0), super phosphate (0-45-0) and potassium
(0-0-50) and make my own mix using a ratio of 2:1:1. I dissolve 1/2 cup
urea with 1/4 cup phosphate and potassium in a small amount of hot water.
This super concentrate gets diluted into 10 litres of water and each
Ensete plant gets this shot of fertilizer, watered in, every week from
early June to October. (As they get dug up for winter, I’m not too
worried about late season applications of fertilizer.) Every few weeks
they also get some magnesium and some fish fertilizer. There doesn’t seem
to be any way to burn them with fertilizer when planted in the ground. (I
wouldn’t use an aggressive fertilizer schedule like this for plants in
pots.) Use caution as nearby plants can suffer from such high levels of
fertilizer–good reason to surround your bananas with cannas and
Colocasias etc.
The other bananas we have (basjoo, sikkimensis, Orinoco, zebrina,
Musella, itinerans) get a similar schedule but smaller quantities of
fertilizer as they just can’t match the maurelii for the “volume” of the
plant (the biggest basjoos get about half the amount).
As other people have also pointed out, the amount of water they get is
also critical. They all love water but must still have good drainage (we
plant ours in raised mounds).
So there’s obviously no magic to anything I do–I just experimented with
how much fertilizer they can take and haven’t hit the limit yet.
My only caution is beware of the monster you are creating. Digging up
several 300+ pound plants, moving them (in our case, down a flight of
stairs into the basement), storing them and then reversing the procedure
in the Spring is back-breaking work. Perhaps ours will get too big this
year (this will be their 3rd summer) to do this. Last year they were 17
feet tall…”