We've had such good luck with our Dwarf Meyer Lemon that we decided to try out a few other dwarf tropical fruits.  These are all house plants that live outside in pots during the summer and then come in to sit in a sunny window in the house through the cold months.

Mostly, we're trying out different types of dwarf citrus, but Mark talked me into taking on two Dwarf Cavendish Bananas as well.  The bananas are very pretty plants that many people would consider worthwhile as simple ornamentals, but I'm bound and determined to raise them all the way to fruiting.  If you can pull it off, Dwarf Cavendish fruits are only a bit smaller than the bananas you buy in the store, and a single plant can produce up to 90 bananas!

We've only had our bananas for five months, but I can already tell that they are a very different beast than lemons.  While our lemon loves light and reaches toward the window, my bananas got sunburned when I let their beautiful leaves get too close to the glass during the summer.  Lemons can deal with some sub-freezing temperatures (although too cold weather will make them drop their fruits), but bananas are supposed to be sensitive to drafts and stop growing below 57 F.

Although they seem to be more sensitive than lemons, bananas are quite easy to propagate since they aren't grafted.  From time to time, a plant will send out an offshoot ("pup") from its base, which can be teased away from the mother plant during repotting and will grow into a new banana.  You'll need to take advantage of these pups because your original banana will eventually produce one huge mass of fruits and then die.  The pups are your next generation, slated to produce bananas in one to two years under good conditions.

While repotting our two bananas (and separating out our first pup), I discovered that bananas have a very different root form from lemons.  The latter likes to spread its roots horizontally, but our banana had instead already sent big roots down to the bottom of the pot.  I'll have to remember to buy deep pots for our bananas rather than wide.

So far we're quite pleased with our bananas, but I reserve judgement until I have a fruit in my hand.  Until then, our Dwarf Cavendish Bananas are yet another Walden Effect experiment.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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