Banana-drama

By Ozhene @papaver

No drama here, quite the opposite, its all been a bit shy and retiring up until now. When I first started thinking about writing this piece I thought I had bought my Musa lasiocarpa last year, maybe the year before. No dear reader, it was 2019 when I bought this plant from my visit to the Woburn Garden Show another clear example where the pandemic has wiped from my mind a good couple of years.

The Musa wasn't the biggest of plants when I bought her, but she was healthy enough, well priced and soon grew well.

She must have lived in her pot for the first couple of years and then I planted her out into the Exotic Border.

You can see her there, under the small Tree Fern and she is happy enough. The sun hits this part of the border full on so she was not as much in shade as it might appear.

Until this winter. This cold winter set a few things back and this banana did not appear this spring. Now I know better than to panic quickly. It was less of a panic, more of a slow decline into disappointment.

Until.....

Suddenly there she was, in early July up she popped. Well, maybe not popped, appeared fairly slowly, edging out of the ground in a 'is it save to come out yet?' way.

I let her grow there for a couple of weeks, but there was not rapid growth. I fed her and whispered words of love to her, but she was definitely feeling shy.

So I dug her up so I could give her a better chance to recover. She has nice fresh compost and I am keeping her well watered. There are new leaves appearing quickly and this seems to have done the trick.

And look at her now! Only a couple of weeks later and she is definitely feeling downright perky!