Bananas are a natural source of potassium...
Plus probably other benefits.

I placed a few entire peels under my rose and
animals started digging... :-O
So I stopped that practice...lol

Maybe chopping them up in smaller pieces would be better? I don't know...

Any kind of vegetable scraps contain potassium. Potato peels have as much as banana. They are not likely to have any effect on roses, especially if the coons carry them off.

Marketing for the banana industry started the notion about miracle potassium in bananas twenty or thirty years ago.

One web site with a serious look and feel says a banana has 425mg potassium and a potato with skin has over 900mg. I cannot find how much potassium in the banana skin.

Thank you all so much answering.

I already knew that bananas contain a fair amount of potassium, but HOW can a rose use THAT? And what does it have to do with sturdier canes?

andrea

Andrea, when I am making a new rose bed, I always start preparing several months ahead. One of the things that I do is to toss in hundreds of banana peels into the soil over several months. I don't know if this gives them any extra potassium or not, but what they will do is rot quickly and turn into compost which is great for roses..

I think that adding organic stuff to the soil is something that you can't go wrong with and your roses will defintely benefit..

Maude

Andrea, potassium (K) is a major nutrient needed by all plants and included in most fertilizers. It's also present in all green yard waste, vegetable scraps, and vegetable cooking water. It's in a soluble form, so can leach out if compost is exposed to rain. However, once applied to the garden, K will be retained if the soil has some clay content or organic content. Most garden soils already have adequate K. It can be deficient in very sandy soils and highly weathered acid soils such as Piedmont clay.

Every cell contains some K, and it apparently plays some role in maintaining moisture balance in the cell. There doesn't seem to be much if any evidence supporting the claim that high K improves winter hardiness or general toughness of plants.

Andrea, let me venture a more "meta" answer to your question, "What will it do for my roses?"

The answer is the same for all 17 essential plant nutrients. An adequate supply will allow the plant to grow normally; a deficiency will keep it from growing normally. An excess will have no effect, or in some cases will cause problems. A few micronutrients are toxic in excess. A number of nutrients, if present in great excess, can interfere with the uptake of other nutrients. (But banana peels are not going to cause problems.)

So instead of piling on stuff that somebody says is "good for roses," the better approach is to know what is in your soil and fertilize (or not) accordingly. If plants aren't growing well, get a soil test. Lacking a soil test, proceed with caution.

Gardeners would like to believe they can make plants do one thing or another by adding extra amounts of this and withholding that. Unfortunately there are lots of garden books and articles that encourage that belief. But it's not the way plant nutrition works. As an example, you may have read, "nitrogen for green growth." But nitrogen is also required for roots, stems, flowers, fragrance, fruit, and any development whatsoever.

Thanks a bunch....I didn't know the answer but I could not see HOW they could make weak stems stronger.

Well, I'm off to pick up my new 'Young Lycidas".

Have a great day, I know that I will.

Thanks again,

andrea