Al...you can grow bananas and fruit them on a regular basis in Florida zone 9b. I'm on the East side of Orlando and still have numerous bunches hanging. The freeze we had a week or so ago didn't help matters and mine had a lot of leaf damage as well. Very crispy and I'll remove the dead ones the first week of March. My soil is also quite sandy. However, I amend the soil considerably. What you can do is amend on top of the sand and around the plants you already have. Compost, Black Kow, oak leaves, grass clippings, chopped up banana trunks, old banana leaves, or what have you should be added around your plants at least 3 inches thick. If you want, for aesthetics, you can top that off with several inches of mulch. After you've done all that, stop off at a bait store and buy a container of worms and dump them in your newly amended banana patch. They'll start eating all the stuff you've put out and will aerate your sandy soil and will also move nutrients down into the soil. Also, skip the Miracle grow, save yourself some cash and use Lesco brand (from Home Depot) palm and tropical fertilizer...about 15$ for a fifty pound bag. It has the minor nutrients your bananas need. Don't use a stricly high nitrogen type fert like you have been. Spread a couple of pounds a month around your plants and water well...at least an inch twice a week. Good luck and keep growing...Z

Beautiful! I really like the dark pink one too. John was just looking at your pics and looked up and said. Hmmmm. We could keep a really tall one in here. We have 12 foot vaulted ceilings in the living room but wall to wall furniture, lol. Too bad for me that I can't afford a flat screen tv to put on the wall over the fireplace. Then I could get rid of the huge entertainment center and keep big plants in the living room. Sorry just thinking out loud, lol.

I have no idea what kind of bananas I have, but it's one that has tall plants. Not a dwarf, that's for sure. It's almost up to the roof now. It's going to be a good 10 feet tall, I believe. I'm hoping it's an ice cream banana. I love those, and they are pretty common around here. I had a Praying Hands in SW FL, but it never got big enough to have fruit. I ended up selling it when I moved. I also had a thousand fingers that died during a particularly wet period.

The best time to do any kind of heavy pruning is not Spring, as in the first day of ...... But Spring, as in the last day of, sounds about right to me. There are 3 reasons for this. 1) In early spring, indoor trees are only sort of maybe thinking about getting a little serious about starting to grow like they might mean it some day. On the last day of spring, they will probably be at the peak of vitality, and their food/energy making ability will be peaking as well, so the recovery time, during which they will be more vulnerable to biotic AND abiotic pathogens, will last only a small fraction of the time it would should you prune now. 2) If you prune your tree now, it's going to put on a lot of growth with long internodes that will work at cross purposes with you trying to ensure your tree is compact and full. What do you do with all that leggy winter growth and the leggy growth your tree has now? How about leave it alone until June, then prune hard? It would be to your tree's advantage. Pruning hard in June means you take off ALL leggy growth from the previous winter. In the summer months, all growth will be tight - with very short internodes. Then, starting in Fall, let the tree grow wild (unpruned) all of next late fall/ winter/ early spring, and remove the leggy winter growth again in June of '20. This means that all internodes from the time you start your pruning sessions, will be short and your tree will be as tight as it can be within the effects of influences like light, temp, and fertility. 3) All plants have natural rhythms. Learning to work with their growth cycle instead of against it is much better for and easier on your trees; and, it makes you a better nurturer for planning your heavy work to take advantage of when your plants are at their best, while making allowances when when the vitality level of your plants is at low ebb, and Also, it doesn't much matter how sharp your pruners are because whatever internode you cut through when you prune is going to die back to the first proximal node, even if you used a laser beam. What you do with your tree now will determine what you'll have to work with in the future. IOW, you probably shouldn't expect the tree to provide you with a structure YOU can build on. You'll need to do that yourself - but it's very easy in this case. I see 3 trunks and a bit of a single wild branch. Is that right? The wild branch should be pruned back to 2 healthy leaves. Of the 3 trunks, the thickest should be the tallest. The next thickest should be pruned back so it is about 2/3 the ht of the tallest trunk after the tallest has been pruned. The thinnest trunk should be about 1/2 the ht of the tallest after it's been pruned. Important: When you make your cuts, make sure the top leaf on the trunks you're cutting faces AWAY from the vertical midline of the pot.If this ^^^ was your pruning cut, you can be sure the branch in the axil (crotch) of this leaf will grow to the right (absent effects of phototropism - growing toward the light). If you'd cut just above the lower leaf, you can be sure it will grow to the left. Plan your cuts so the new branches will grow outward from the center and not inward. If you're interested in what I'm saying, I'll help you with how to keep your tree from getting so far out of control it needs a hard prune to reset it to something you can build a canopy on. Obviously, you don't want your canopy at ceiling ht where (lack of) light will be a serious limitation. Al