Buy Banana Tree

Before you go ahead and buy banana tree bulbs, suckers or seeds, there are a few things to take into account. By carefully selecting the right banana tree variant for you instead of simply picking the first one you encounter, you can avoid a lot of potential problems. First and foremost, do you plan on keeping your banana tree indoors or outdoors? Or perhaps you want to be able to bring your banana tree out for the summer season and bring it in again when the temperature drops?

If you plan on keeping an indoor banana tree, make sure that you select a banana variant that will not grow too big. A banana variant where the pseudostems rapidly reaches a height of 5-8 metres and grow 2-3 metre long leaves is naturally hard to cope with for most apartments, and sticking to one of the dwarf variants is therefore a much better choice. Before you buy banana tree species or cultivars, always check how large they can become and whether or not you will have to spend a lot of time and efforts pruning them down to a more manageable size.

If you live outside the tropics and want to keep outdoor bananas, buy banana tree variants that can endure the cold that they will be subjected to. This way, you do not have to bring the rhizome indoors each winter. Examples of cold hardy banana variants are the Chinese Wax Banana (Musella lasciocarpa), the Orinoco Banana (Musa ‘Orinoco’) and the Japanese Fiber Banana. You can make them even more capable of surviving the winter by using ample amounts of mulch to protect the rhizome. The Japanese fiber banana is the most cold tolerant banana of the three, but if you plan to buy banana tree with the intent of eating the fruit, it is not your best alternative since the fruits of the Japanese fiber banana are small and not very tasty. The Orinoco banana is a better pick in this situation, since it will produce big and tasty bananas. The Orinoco banana is considered hardy to zone 8 (American zoning) and can be kept in zone 7 if you provide with a lot of protection during the winter.

The Chinese Wax Banana is a popular choice among those who keep bananas primarily for their flowers, not for their fruit. To buy banana tree of this variety is a good choice if you want to decorate your home or garden with intricate, artichoke shaped bright yellow banana flowers. The Chinese Wax Banana looks more like a shrub than a tree and will rarely exceed 2 metres in height. It can therefore be grown indoors, as long as you are able to provide it with sufficient amounts of light.