Organic Bananas?

[LM405]

Anyone know where I can buy a variety of banana plants in Ubon Ratchathani? I have a few growing in my yard, kluay nam wa, kluay thani, kluay hin, kluay thip yai and kluay nguang chang. I will add a few more once I have the time. Another question, I want to keep my plants organic and easy. I only fertilize them (cow manure) once a month and water them every 3 days. Any other organic composts or medias you guys can recommend to grow healthy and sweet bananas would be greatly appreciated.

[canuckamuck]

whatcha mean by organic then? If you are growing it yourself then just don't use any chemicals. Or do you mean propagated by seed and not by planting a shoot?

Most bananas in the average farmers field never see any fertilizer or chemical. We have hundreds of them, we don't do anything for them except replant occasionally. They do like some potassium though. Going to try a test section this year.

[LM405]

I only use cow manure, I've tried guano and worm castings before but I find cow manure to be the most effective. I meant organic as when I buy them from sellers. I see farmers adding all kinds of mixtures into their soil and fertilizers. What would be a good source of potassium to add to them? Banana peels, kelp meal?

[Speedo1968]

Depends on the translation of "organic", if you / sellers of bananas are using cow, poultry, duck manure is the manure classed as organic ?   A very arguable subject ( organic ); probably best just to say that organic means the use of animal / plant / human material rather than processed industrial minerals and other items such as ammonia.

 

You could try adding egg shells, coffee grounds, banana skins all good sources of potassium.   Sourcing the coffee grounds may be difficult as these are often used for other crops, egg shells where I live up country seem to have no takers.

 

Spraying of crops is often done, purposely or by drift from a neighbours field yet produce still labeled as "organic".

 

Good luck, and yes "keep it simple, keep it cheap".

[LM405]

Organic as in only using animal and plant based sources Speedo, excluding processed industrial minerals as you perfectly described. I noticed I wasn't too specific in my post. 

 

In the past I have learned from my own mistakes as to how much water banana plants need, a few of my plants contributed root rot from over-watering and died. Rainy season didn't help with that problem. I find watering the plants every 2-3 days most suitable.

 

I will definitely give egg shells, coffee grinds and banana peels a try. Thank you for your advice.

[canuckamuck]

In my research I have seen that commercial outfits use a mix of 15-0-45 so if you get some 0-0-60 and 45-0-0 (both available here) and mix three parts of the first and one part of the second it should get you 15-0-45. You won't be getting that ratio from manure. Bananas have not much use for nitrogen and no use for phosphates. But if you use manure plus some potassium pellets  you will be getting close. I can't see why anyone would have a problem with potassium. it's a good mineral.

Edited February 19, 2018 by canuckamuck