I also received my 2 Ice creams today too from Greenearth!
It's so exciting getting a new plant in the mail- Isn't it?!

Nice plant!
Carey

Now lets just hope I can make it survive here. I was surprised to get it. They had said they werent shipping it OUT til the 24th, so I wasnt expecting it til next week. Was a pleasant surprise! Mine is also from greenearth. Please feel free to attach a pic of yours. (Prolly looks the same tho, eh?)

Kim

Just keep these simple tips in mind and you'll have a happy banana plant.

1. Never let the soil dry.
2. Fertilize at least occaisionally
3. Never subject your banana plant to frost. Try to avoid temps below 40 degrees. Anything lower than 50 will dramatically slow or force your plant into hibernation.
4. Change the soil in the pot at least once a year.

Very nice pics. Congrats!! I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my first banana plants ordered from Green Earth. I only ordered two to start off with til' I see what these look like.

Leona

I do have one question tho. (Im sure there will be more in the furture. LOL) When is it safe to start gradually moving it into the sun? They said to keep it in the shade til it gets used to the weather, but since I dont speak Plantenese, how will I know?

On a side note,..I dont know if it was just me, or were the directions wrote in such grammatical errors, that it was hard to understand?

I'd give it morning sun for a week, morning+mid day for a week and then full sun. My ice cream have never gotten less than full SoCal sun and they enjoy it. They also stay out all year and get light frost. It sets them back, but no big deal. since you have to bring them in anyway, 40F nights is a good time.

I'm in San Diego as well and my Ice Cream (greenearth plant as well) seems to handle the sun the best. It's leaves hardly even fold down now even on the hottest days.

I think I did partial sun for a week, then just put them out all day. Some of the young leaves did get crispy, but everything after the first three or four new leaves has handled the sun just fine.

This is mine something like 3 months after I got it, (it looked a little less ragged last week before my dumb dog ran headfirst into it).
{{gwi:411699}}

OK then I guess I shouldnt feel bad about the one "sun crinkled" leaf already. It was extremely hot today tho. I guess I will find a morning sun place for it tomorrow, or at least very soon. I'll keep you all updated. Also whats the average foot per month ratio on these? Would I get fruit this year, or would it be next year?

Yeah, both of mine look the same as yours. I am very happy with all of my plants I received from them. I also ordered from Going Banana's and Banana Tree and all are good healthy stock. Although some I only ordered 1 and I wished I ordered 2- as backup you never know what the cats, kids or nature might do! (Please no hurricanes this year).

Carey

TazDevyl,
I wouldn't expect fruit for at least 3-4 years in NJ if you overwinter it in a basement. At least 1-2 with a greenhouse. I've noticed a new leaf every 4 to 5 days in upper 80's to mid 90 degree days. This is my second year with my ice cream. I overwintered mine in front of a window in a pot and planted it in the ground in early May. The psuedostem is now almost 7 feet tall. It's grown about 1 1/2 feet since it's been in the ground but it is growing much faster now. Because of the height, I plan on overwintering it in the basement this winter. I'm not expecting fruit for at least 2 more years.

Im willing to wait the few years for it to produce fruit. Its still alive so thats a good sign. LOL Poor thing, I have to keep moving it. I put it next too my bleeding hearts, but how the sun/shade goes its weird. So I had moved it this morning to over by the zucchinis, as that area only gets morning sun, and by 1 or 2 p.m. its shaded over. And what happens? RAIN!!! ALL DAY! Called my dad, said move it onto the deck please! ( It had just been watered a day or 2 ago, so was still wet.) So guess I will move it back out tomorrow morning. Provided it doesnt rain again. As for the greenhouse, we are prolly making an "A-Frame" this year, so it might go in there. Or in my garage, which is finished, and stays relatively warm in there during the winter.

Racer, I noticed you live in a semi colder zone. Is yours staying out all year, or will you be moving it come winter?

I will be digging all 3 of them up in fall and cutting all the leaves of except for the newest. Then hosing off all the dirt on the corm and storing them in the basement so they go dormant. With winter days that can last below 0, I'm not confident that they could survive. Also, I want to keep the height of the plant. If you keep it outside in winter, at the very least, it will die down to the ground. I think temps need to be in the 60s at a minumum if you don't want your plant to go dormant. In a pot below this temp, they can rot pretty easily. Lets not think about that now and enjoy summer. There will be plenty of posts on overwintering as winter approaches that will give you options on what to do with your banana.

In 2001 I ordered an 'Ice Cream' banana. It was about 6 inches tall and I planted it in a 12 inch pot and kept it inside, since I didn't receive it until October. During the winter, it did not do well and declined in size. I thought it might die. However, come early May I placed the pot outside. At this time it was about the size of an average pinky finger. After about a week or two it had sent out a new leaf. At this point I fed it a gallon of Miracle Grow a week. In no time it had grown to be about a foot high. At this time I began to feed it a gallon of double strength Miracle Grow every week and watered it whenever the top of the soilless mix became dry. Come early September the pseudostem was about 11 inches in diameter. So I transplanted the banana into an 18 inch pot and fed and watered it as was done previously. In about mid October I had a garage sale because I had to move due to a new job. The thing people wanted to buy the most was my banana plant, but I could not part with it. The size of the banana was enormous. It was about 6.5 feet tall at the top of the pseudostem and about 8 feet tall at the top of the leaves. The pseudostem was about a foot in diameter. It was a thing of beauty. Because of the move, I had to keep the banana in my in-lawÂs basement, where the plant died by the Spring. I tell this tale to show how quickly the ÂIce Cream grows, even in a pot. I can only imagine how big the ÂIce Cream banana would have gotten had it survived and was planted in the ground or if I had planted it in the ground from the start.

Ah, those ÂIce Cream memories.

Well, even tho I doubt anyone will see this post, it has a new leaf which is unfurling each day! It rained one day here and so I put the plant in the rain. I had intended it to be there for only 15 min..OOPS I forgot about it and left it there for 1/2 hour. But apparently it didnt hurt anything. =)

I saw your post & your plant is very nice. I have a few unnamed bananas I dug up 2 years ago from the company I worked for that went out of business. Their bananas were planted along a drainage ditch & the soil was always boggy. There were dozens of plants, many over 15 feet tall, & they were always healthy, though they received no care of any kind. I don't think you can overwater a banana as long as you've got good drainage. Is Greenearth online? I'd love to order an Ice Cream! :)

YEs they are online, and thru e-bay as well. They go by another name as well, but its escaping me at the moment. If you go on e-bay type in ice cream banana. If I remember correctly thats how I found mine. If im wrong, Im sure someone will correct me shortly. LOL
Altho I should warn you theres a few people who dont like greenearth and will let it be known. And even after reading all the negatives about them, I still took my chances. =)

Where did you hear all the negatives about greenearth? I've seen the web site that has them as all positives.
gardenwatchdog.com

There was a thread a couple weeks back on here - one of the people here got a rude reponse to a question about pricing, but it was resolved amicably and the guy got a free plant to boot.

When I googled greenearth bananas yesterday, that thread you mentioned was the third item on the list! If I hadn't read further, I would have thought greenearh was a horrible company to deal with. It seems there was a teenage boy who ordered a banana, & then got an email from greenearth that they were going to charge him $2 LESS because the plant was smaller than the one he ordered. The boy got mad, there was an angry exchange, the order was cancelled. Then, the boy received the plant, anyway. Greenearth had decided to ship it to him free. That's the kind of company I'd like to deal with! I hope that thread doesn't hurt their business. How does Google determine the ranking of their searches?

Here is a link that might be useful: greenearth thread

I recently got an Ice Cream from GreenEarth as well - here are two photos:

Will post more when she gets bigger!

I purchase my bananas from Stokestropicals.com. I have 2 Ice creams from them which I planted about 18 months ago, both are 15-18 feet tall. I just picked the last of the bunch off one of them, which I got over 100lbs of bananas off of, and one of the keiki's is already flowering. The other Ice Cream has one huge bunch on it now, and one of the babies off that plant just put out a flower. They are very productive, get very large very quickly, well, in my zone anyway, and they need lots and lots of water and fertilizer so they can keep up with the growth. I use either Stoke's Banana blend, slow release fertilizer which is very high in potassium, or I use a 10-20-20 granular.

bdenny....a GALLON of miracle grow a week? Wow, that's alot! I didn't know bananas could take that much fertilizer!

I have to agree with the willingness of the folks (Ted) at GreenEarth to help. I received a poorly packaged parcel with two banana plants that were severely damaged in shipment. I wrote GE and received two fine plants and two additional plants that were along the types I had ordered. Everything was carefully packaged. I believe that Ted does his best to please his customers. I am very pleased anyway.

gardenguy,
Don't forget that miracle grow is only one Tablespoon of 15-30-15 per gallon regular strength. Therefore, over the 5 months (about 22 weeks) at double strength and 1 month (about 4 weeks) at regular strength or 48 tablespoons that's about 24 ounces or 1.5 pounds of fertilizer over a 6 month period. Therefore the plant was supplied with about 3.6 oz N -7.2 oz P -3.6oz K. So as you see it really didn't get that much fertilizer over time. It probably got more Phosphorus than it needed. Had I given it fertilizer higher in N and K (such as KNO3 Â Potassium Nitrate) along with a little Phosphorous it might have grown even faster.

My potted ice cream banana is now at about 16 feet. It's in a 24 inch pot. I live in the San Fernando Valley and it consumes about 6 gallons of water per day in summer.

After reading the other comments, perhaps a tablespoon of Miracle Grow once a month has been on the light side.

I am still waiting for fruit. However, it has just put out a tiny leaf, with a more reddish color stem on it. Perhaps that proceeds a flower?