Food and WATER. They love rich, fertile soils, warmth and humidity. Outside, they will take full sun but watch them for heat stress if your sun is too hot. (There tends to be a lot of clouds in humid/tropical climates, and this softens the sun some.) Also, replant when needed. P.S., nice variety as they constantly sucker and make more plants!

Banana fruit is known for its particularly high levels of potassium, so they obviously need a potassium-rich formula. As they can grow in poor soils and without high water content (actually they stock water in their porous tissue for drought periods), lower N and P (P is anyway overrated from 40 upwards for almost every plant) are recommended. In temporary dry soils P is dissolved even slower as it normally is. Also, a dwarf specie doesn't need to be fed that heavily. Hence general purpose formula would probably look like this: N=170-180 P=36 K=270 Ca=160-180 Mg=38 S=75 Trace Elements Iron 5⨠Manganese 3 â¨Boron 0.8⨠Zinc 0.5⨠Copper 0.08⨠Molybdate 0.05 Recommended EC 1.2-1.5 in an early stage and not more than 1.8-2.0 EC until harvest. The general purpose formula could be slightly modified as in 150-160 N only, and 290-320 K to be more balanced for fruiting stage.

I have two that I make, one I just made, banana blueberry oat or banana oat muffins. But both call for buttermilk or yogurt, which is interchangable with buttermilk in a muffin recipe. I just made the banana blueberry ones for breakfast yesterday. Here are my banana bread recipes, which don't call for yogurt/buttermilk. Banana Oat Bread 1 1/4 cups unsiftrd flour (can use part whole wheat) 3/4 cup quick oats (not instant) 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar (can use 1/3 cup) 1 tsp. baking powder 1 tsp. baking soda 1/2 tsp. cinnamon 3 TBLSP vegetable oil 1/2 tsp. salt 2 eggs beaten (can use one egg and two egg whites) 1 cup mashed bananas (2 large ones) 1/2 cup maple syrup (I guess you could use brown sugar, here, I dunno, I always have maple syrup on hand, I love it!) Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease loaf pan. together banana, eggs, oil, sugar, syrup and oats. Mix dry ing. together. Add to wet ingredients and mix well. Turn into a 9x5 greased loaf pan. Bake at 350 until a wooden pick inserted in the middle comes out clean, at least 50 minuntes. Cool at least 10 min. before slicing. Lpink's note: the more you follow the parentheses directions the healthier the bread becomes. Banana wheat Quick Bread 1 1/4 cup unbleached flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 3/4 cup sugar (or 2/3) 1 tsp. soda 1 tsp. salt 1 1/2 cups (3 med.) mashed bananas 1/4 cup margarine or butter softened (you probably could use some kind of vegetable oil here) 2 TBLSP orange juice 1/4 tsp. lemon juice, if desired 1 egg (or 2 egg whites) 1/4 - 1/2 cup raisins Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bake in a greased 9x5 or 8x4 inch pan. Flour the bottom of the pan. Combine wet ingredients. Combine dry ing. Mix wet and dry until well mixed. Bake at 325 for 60-70 min until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool before slicing. I've made both breads and gotten compliments on them. They are definately not as light as the traditional higher fat quick breads though. You need to test them for doneness and they often need to bake a little longer, but depends on how your oven works.

The bananas did give me some joy. I've had bananas off the tree in the tropics, and so I know how good they can be. As for mangoes, it is a good idea to net the fruit like this, especially to protect them from squirrels. This is similar to what I did with pineapple. I had no problem with animals eating my mangoes in Venice CA, but I did have a teenage surfer steal some of them once. After that I made sure that I kept my back gate locked. My neighbor next door caught the boy stealing my mangoes, and he asked the boy what he was doing, and the boy said that he knew me. Then my neighbor asked him what my name was, and the boy ran off with the mangoes. He only got two or three, but I did not have a large crop that year - only about twelve or fourteen that season, and the boy got the best ones. I didn't care if people stole figs because I had more than I could give away.