If you’re adding soil, try to provide loamy or sandy soil rather than clay types.īlue java bananas prefer the soil pH to be between 5.5-7.0. Good quality compost is another great ingredient.
Use coconut coir, peat moss, or even some Worm castings to provide water retention. If you’re blending your own potting mix, try to make sure about 20% of it is made up of perlite or other drainage aids. If it’s not possible, consider solarizing your soil months before planting to reduce risk. Start with a sterile soil blend when possible to avoid soilborne fusarium. Both of these tend to develop in excessively-wet soil, so make sure it drains extremely well. Like most other banana trees, its root system is susceptible to fungal pathogens like pythium that cause root red. Good drainage is essential for growing bananas, particularly the blue java. While it can survive in lower humidity levels, a humidity level of 50% is just about perfect. Like most tropicals, your blue java enjoys some ambient humidity. The rest of the year, skip watering if it rains significantly, and water every other day if it hasn’t been raining. During the summer, it is likely to be daily. Water deeply on a daily or every-other-day basis. If you’d prefer, place a soaker hose around the base and allow it to do a long, deep soaking. Ensure your soil is very well-draining and that it doesn’t pool up around the plant during rain. You will find these tropics to be thirsty for! However, they do not tolerate standing water anywhere near as well.
Read through to figure out the best conditions for your plant!Īll bananas love water. In California, they average 12-15 feet tall, and in tropical regions can reach heights of 20 feet.Ĭaring for them is pretty easy as long as you give them the right start. While there are many dwarf banana species, this is not one of them. Once the fruit turns yellow and ripe, the false stem can be cut back to the corm, and one of these new pups can take over for the next growth spurt. Other than the blue java plant, more offstrike or “pups” will form from the corm. Ice cream banana plant can take 15-24 months after planting to put up its first main stem. At this point, the remaining flower can be cut away so that the plant can focus on its fruit. Each hand of ice cream bananas will form under its petal until no more petals open. As they grow, they’re blue bananas, really pretty on the plant. These are what eventually become the fruit. Each petal will gradually peel back and form a shade for the small collection of banana flowers underneath. It is on this true stem that a single large flower will develop. This grows through the center of the main stalk and then out, hanging off to one side. When the blue java banana is on the fruit, it sends out a thick stem called the real stem. This stalk is actually a cylinder of tightly-packed banana leaves that grow directly up from the corm. The rhizome produces one main stem called the false stem that forms the “trunk” of the banana “tree”. This base extends about 18″ into the ground before producing roots. It’s renowned to be a vanilla custard type of flavor, and definitely worth eating!īlue java bananas grow, as all bananas do, from a rhizomatic corm. It’s often called the ice cream banana because they taste like ice cream. The Blue java banana does get a delicious dessert flavor, with Musa acuminata in the lineage of the ABB group. So it’s interesting that such a gooey and rich dessert banana would come from that stock!
Musa balbisiana is the species used most commonly for cooking bananas such as plantains. Musa acuminata is more commonly known as The Cavendish banana, or any number of Cavendish-related cultivars thereof. They take one set of chromosomes from Musa acuminata and two from Musa balbisiana. Three letters are used to indicate how much of each species is present in the hybrid.īlue java bananas are part of the ABB group. These are classified into groups that reference either Musa acuminata or M.
BLUE JAVA BANANA HOW TO
So let’s talk about the banana ice cream factory and how to take care of it!Īll edible bananas are hybrids of two species: Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana. The flower is awesome, and the fact that you get fresh fruit from it so much the better. These plants are a fantastic addition to any food garden, but they are rather awesome even if you just want a tropical paradise in your yard. While they grow naturally in Hawaii or other tropical regions, more and more people in warm climates are starting to grow their own Blue java bananas. Slightly gooey in comparison to other banana types, these are rapidly gaining popularity around the world. And did I mention that it tastes like vanilla ice cream? An ice cream banana is initially blue while on the plant, but ripens into a creamy yellow color. But the blue java banana, also called ice cream bananas, is an incredible fruit. Banana with ice cream? It sounds almost too good to be true.