Grand Nain 'Naine' Banana Tree

Love the plants so far, very cute. Doing well in early spring in GA

I didn’t know much about banana trees (and still don’t - well, maybe a little more now - but just a little). So I thought it would be a cool indoor plant (we live in the northeast) where we have high ceilings. It arrived in good shape, with 3 leaves, 1 broken and a new one starting (1st picture - after potting). The leaves were torn in many spots and at the time was a little concerned. But, as I have learned the leaves are very fragile, easily tear so in hindsight, if it didn’t look like it did after shipping, I’d be very surprised. I planted with a tropical planting mix which has sand in it. Since I knew the water would drain fast in the mix AND banana trees need lots of water…LOTS! I eventually built a cheezy system to water it every other day automatically with just enough water to have it flow out the bottom of the pot. If a plant relies on me to care for it every day to do well, it will surely meet a slow and painful demise. During the summer when it warms up inside, increased the watering to every day. Shortly after potting a 2nd sprout started and really has been quite slow growing, but it’s there and has green leaves (more on that later) Fertilization was about as random as it gets, but typically in spring and summer. #1 question when people saw it was: “will it produce bananas?”…#1 answer: “we have no idea”. Fast forward to 22 months later and it literally popped out of nowhere, but the fruit and banana stem appeared…Couple weeks later, it looks like the 2nd-4th pictures. As I’m sure everyone knows, banana trees are often cut down after they produce fruit, as they only do it once in it’s lifetime…so that little spout that’s been there since close to the beginning is starting to grow faster now. Not sure how long after the bananas are harvested (thinking optimistically), that we will cut it down, but honestly wasn’t sure what to with this thing from the start, so I guess that is just another thing we will have to figure out. Oh and you will see in the picture, we had to strap the tree in place about 18 months after planting as it was starting to lean significantly and was on the edge of tipping over - maybe this was a sign it was about to fruit and make room for the next spout - who knows!? Oh, and can’t say it enough…it needs LOTS of water. All in all, it’s been a great tree and conversation piece, arrived in good condition, and couldn’t be any happier with the plant and fastgrowingtrees.com.

Buying a banana tree as a houseplant in Ohio, I was basically hoping it would survive and look nice - wasn’t expecting it to explode given the lack of tropical climate. When it arrived in late March it was a perfectly packaged, nice looking small plant. Six months later it is a giant that I am not entirely sure will fit back out my door come spring. We haven’t gotten fruit yet, but the growth has been incredible to watch. I’ve bought several other trees (Meyer lemon, Persian lime, harvester peach, and cold hardy avocado) and all seem to be doing great. Customer service has been very helpful answering my questions a few times. Currently trying to restrain myself from buying more until we start getting fruit, but fully expert to purchase many more trees from this company in the years to come.

Tree arrived in good condition, transferred to larger pot and seems happy.