I've gotten bananas here in SW-Pa and the problem is that when the bananas first form, you need almost 6 months for the bananas to ripen on the plant. Here, when my banana flower started (dwarf orinoco), it was the first week of August. Problem was that it was too close to garbage season, ahem...cough.... winter. I tried to bring in the bananas to ripen before the first frost during the last week of October but it didn't happen. Not to take away from getting edible bananas, I think that if I had gotten the flowers in early June, I would have more time for the bananas to grow on the tree before I had to bring them in to ripen. Also, just getting the flowers and seeing them form into bananas was a wonderful experience. The banana flowers, it seem to me had a very musky scent that I could smell across the yard. It's not like any other flower I've smelled. Lemon tree flowers, I'd say are the most fragrant flowers out there, but that's another topic! :)

Have never planted much but I LOVE gardening so I figured I'd be over zealous this year and started some veggie seeds inside. I live in zone 5b (southern WI) and have some concerns I was hoping to get feedback on. I just planted my red cherry tomatoes on the 17th. The seed packet says they should sprout in 7-15 days... well it's 5 days later and they have all come up. They look skinny and the stems are long.. like almost 3 inches with the cotyledons at the top. This doesn't look like any of the pictures I've seen so I think I've done something wrong :( I used a seed starter mix soil blend and they are in containers with a plastic dome on top. At the plant store they told me that tomatoes like "warm" and to use a heating pad... so I did. I bought a "germinating heating pad." Since I've never done this before, I asked a ton of questions and was advised to not water them with tons of water but to spritz them with water- which I do once a day. I'm not sure if what is happening is okay, or if something is going terribly wrong. Am I over-watering them? Are they not getting enough light? (they're in a window) Is the heating pad causing this? Should I take the plastic domes off? Do I need to start over? HELP!!! I am determined and motivated to make this work :)

I'm far FAR from being an expert but I think your tomato plant looks pretty good. My tomatoes always have leaf spots and they tend to grow out of the problems as the weather warms.. Your watering and fertilizing sound fine. You could remove the affected leaves if there aren't too many and then watch and see if it show up on other leaves. Yes, I have heard it is a good idea to remove the bottom leaves if they are touching the ground as that is how a lot of diseases get on the plant. I do it and it seems like a good idea. I see you have some type of watering system, make sure water is not getting on the leaves.

I see no reason to trim them off if its healthy foliage because they will probably produce tomatoes. If you have the space and season time theres really no reason to cut all the suckers off from what I've read. You can trim the branches touching the soil to reduce chances of disease though.