almost done!

So this is going to be one of the last Nanners posts. I am currently swamped down with homework and reaching finals time. Next week in fact is final time. lots to do! Nanners is still the same. i am still a little worried but i was reading up about the Musa Banana plant, which Nanners is, and it says it is the hardiest of the banana plants. This makes me happy a lot. however, hardiest of the banana plants still could mean that they all are hard to take care of and they all die easily in foreign weather. Whatever. It is still alive now and im sure it will continue to be alive. I was kind of hoping to bring Nanners home since i am going home for a week after this semester. then i could have my mom raise it for a while...however there are going to be 4 or 5 people with their stuff on a small Toyota Camry for ~24 hours straight so i dont think we want Nanners with us as well...we will see. if i dont give nanners to my roomate like i said before i might just take it to colorado to the ranch with me. that might be interesting.

eureka

So i think that Nanners is struggling a bit. It is still alive, so technically it is ok and i still will get the extra credit. besides, i only have less than 2 weeks of the semester and i know Nanners will last that long. I have a theory that Nanners is struggling becuase of the weather. in the winter we kept the apartment hot with the heater. now that it is a little nicer out we have not had the heat on and we have had the windows and doors open more. Nanners is in the living room with all the open window and doors. it is actually colder now with the chill spring air for nanners than it was in the winter with the heat. soon i hope it will be warm enough for Nanners to feel better. this is my thought of nanners sadness.

dead

dont worry everybody, Nanners is not dead, she is definatly alive and kicking.....however.... i think Lello is dead. Lello is all shriveled up and brown completely. nothing is really left.

Services will be held for Lello on Sunday March 28th at 7pm in the rexburg stake center next to the temple. veiwing will be from 4-7.

less leaves?

i dont know if it is just me, but im pretty sure that the new coils/leaves in the middle that come up now come up slower. It may just be because i am used to it now so it does not fascinate me as much, but i swear it is growing slower. it only has 4 leaves right now. i dont know what is going on. i would think that with the warmer weather now that it would strat to grow faster. i dont know. no matter what though i still love Nanners!

Progress

So i think Nanners is amazing! She just keeps on growing! once again a new leaf is growing and almost out. Nanners has grown, tall wise, only a little so far, however i think overall this musa banana plant just does that such thing. it just grows slow. this means that my plant is all healthy and green and good and stuffs. i just cant wait it produces fruit. this wont be for a while but the day it happens it will be amazzzing!

BFF's

so me and Nanners (and Baby!) are like BFF's! we do everything together! just check out this rad photo!

Soil

The soil in Nanner's pot looks a little weird. It has like a white crust film like thing on the top of the soil. It looks odd. I sometimes want to change the soil and put new soil in the pot. However i don't know if and how that would affect the plant. I have a hunch that the white stuff is from the miracle grow. It may just be some of the minerals in the blue water that never seeped into the soil. I dont really know, that is just my guess. I will figure it out later and keep watching it.

Lello?!?

So i see that little lello is struggling. its leaves are all icky and shrivily and falling off. I cant tell if it is because it is going through the normal banana plant leave shedding or it is just dieing. it could possibly be that it is just shedding and that it just looks like it is dieing because it is so small. when the leaves die, the majority of the plant, it looks like it is the whole plant. happily, i do notive a new leaf in the middle of lello comeing up. it looks like a little spear.

Potassium

So when i first purchased the plant i had mentioned that i thought that Nanners was potassium deficient. For a while she looked great, and i give the credit to the special blue water (miracle grow). Now however, i noticed a little bit of brown spots on the plant again. I wonder if this is from when i didn't use the spesh. blue water. I hope it goes away and it is healthy again soon since i am using the blue water again.

Same as always

So i have noticed that my plants are obviously gowing. They are always getting new leaves, so they must be growing. However, i dont see much overall growth of Nanners. I see Lello growing cause she is so small and i notice it, but it is harder with Nanners. I noticed that the leaves of Nanners always grows to about the same size (aprox one ft long) as well. Weird, but i guess thats normal since thats what normal trees do too.

WARM!!!

My plants are loving the warm weather!! Currently its like 40 degrees outside! ITS AMAZING! they are growing and triving with it! Nanners has a new leaf1 Amazing!

Blue Water

So I finally became un-lazied again and made some miracle water for Nanners and baby! I am really hopeing that they will both start to grow faster again. Lello now has 4 little banana leaves. FOUR! it is amazing!

So the plants and i are watching jurassic park. it is their first movie so i figured i would start with a good one!!! they can learn all about dinosaurs! they are amazing!!

Miracle Grow

I have been watering the plant with only water lately. Earlier I had only watered it with Miracle grow in the water. I did this change not because i really wanted to, but because i was too lazy to mix more miracle grow in the water pitcher. well, i have noticed that the plant grows significantly slower with only water compared to with the fertilizer. I know that reading about the banana plants it says the fertilizer is very important. I think they are right!

thirsty thirsty plant

So i left for the weekend...a long weekend. that means that poop Nanners and baby didn't get watered for a while. the first thing i did when i did get home was to check the plants and watered them right away. despite the length of time without water they look like they are doing pretty good. according to some research they can go a little bit without food, they will just grow slower. Lello seems to be going well and growing though! it has 3 tiny leaves ( about 2 inches) and another one coming in as a coil.

Shrukedness

So i peeled off 2 of Nanner's leaves (one from each side) today. Now Nanners looks really really small. The stem looks teeny. The outside leaves were preatty gross, thats why i tore them off. It made me start wondering now though if you can peel off the leaves too early. I should probobly figure that out. I always wanted to figure out the whole baby plant thing too. I know some plants if a little one next to a big one starts, that means the big plant is losing its nutrients to the little one. That is when you are supposed to chop off and get rid of the small one. I want to know if i can separate the two and start the little one as a totally new plant in a new pot....

Lello

Lello Lello Is A great Fello
Lello Lello wants to say Hello!

Lello is doing great! He asked me today to tell you all Hello and that he LOVES you!

Go Lello!!!

Lello (along with Nanners) is growing great! She is healthy and strong. She drinks her milk and eats her vegetables so she can one day become a tall, strong, tree.

Yucky leaves

So, the outside leaves are looking pretty gross. I think that means it is time for them to be peeled off. I am amazed how fast the leaves grow and develop on a banana plant. There are always these new coils in the middle. I'm surprised the plant doesn't grow faster as a whole...then again i guess the outsides die so those have to be peeled off. If they didn't have to be peeled off, all the way to the bottom of the plant, Banana plants would grow crazily fast and be huge.

The Work Goes Forth

So, it has now been a few weeks and guess what? My plant is still alive!

Nanners has yet another coil coming up! It is about 3 inches. the first full coil i noticed since i got it is now a 13 inch leaf! Little Lello has two 2 inch leaves! Nanners says she feels great and healthy! She is ready to get done with the semester though, so she can get into a warmer climate and not have her life threatened so like it is here in rexburg. She is ready for the summer.

Cucumbers?!?

So I just peeled back 2 deadish leaves from Nanners. I never did that before so i was preatty amazed on how easy it was. The weird thing is that the plant, especially when you peel and cut off the leaves, smells like cucumber. It is really weird. I kind of wonder why....

Well, now that the crappy leaves are gone, the plant looks great! go nanners!

Nanners had a BABY!

CONGRATS NANNERS!

Nanners had a baby plant!

Right next to nanners there is a little bitty banana plant! HORRAY!
It's about an inch tall.

Baby plant shall be named Lello.

Thriving In The Cold

I am not going to lie, I am surprised the banana plant is doing so well in this cold climate. It is way too dry and too cold than it really needs to be. My apartment however is fairly warm and I squirt it with a water bottle for pretend humidity. I also water it was miracle grow.

You know how I said there was a new leaf? Well there is that leaf and out of nowhere another coil came up in the new leaf, making 2 new leaves since i got it. (you have to remember these leaves are pretty big, about a foot long, so it is pretty impressive.) There are a total of 7 leaves. 2 are pretty bad so I plan to peel them off soon, which I think you do. 3 are in fairly good condition, and then there is the first new leaf that is almost all the way open and the approximately 8" coil. They are perfect. YAAAAY! GO BANANA PLANT!

It is cool how the plant grows from the inside. The leaf comes from the inside and spreads out, more and more coming out. pretty darn cool.

Great News!

The small coil that was in the middle of the plant is now a big coil! It has successfully grown to 10.5 inches! It looks more like a funnel now, about to uncoil into a leaf! It is beautiful green, unlike the outside leaves which are not looking so hot. Thas ok though because new ones are on the waaaay!!!

Do the Leaves Leave?

The picture on this post is an old picture of me on a banana from high school. I used it as a senior picture. It was one of those boring days of high school so I ditched school. However I worked after school nearby, and to go home and come all the way back would be a waste. I ended up going to my dad's shop which was close and hung out with him. That is what we ended up doing...

I took a few more beginning measurements of Nanners today.

- from the soil to the leaves the 'stalk' of Nanners is 11 3/4 in. (almost a foot. woot!)
- Nanners in a total of 1 ft 9 inches tall
- The New coil coming in in the center of the plant is currently approximately 8.5 in.

When i first obtained Nanners a few days ago the new coil was probably only around 4 inches, so it has grown quite a bit already.

The leaves on the outside not looking so hot. I wonder if they die like palm tree leaves and you chop them off. On the other hand, I don't really know much about palm trees either since I only saw palm trees when I visited Vegas in the past. It almost appears like that is what you do though. The bottom of the plant has markings where it looks like it has been cut of old leaves already. I plan to research this and I still have to look up my questions I had in the last entry.

I purchased miracle grow on Saturday and fed Nanners. I was hoping to find something better but because Rexburg has limmited resources I had to settle. It looks like CoolAid and I made it in a pitcher (I don't know whose pitcher), so i had warned my roomates not to drink it.

Over and Out.

Specs.

As I said earlier, I purchased the plant today. I purchased it on campus while passing through a campus building. I had other classes and groups to attend before trudging back to my apartment so the plant had to attend them all with me. It was a fun packed day, for apparently a girl walking around campus with a banana plant in the middle of January gets a lot of attention. I met a lot of new people and friends today and had some hilarious conversations, including with some pretty cute guys. ;) The only problem was that it is January in Idaho. It was -15 today while this was happening, and Banana plants (aka Nanners) are used to warm, wet, tropical weather.

So now that Nanners and I are happily warm and cozy in my apartment, I sat down with Nanners and spent some time with Him, getting to know him more...this is what i found out.

-Nanner's current largest leaf size is 1 ft. long
-His base 'stalk' diameter is approximately 1 3/4 in.
-The pot size He is in is 9 in. in diameter
-A few of the ends of His leaves are a little brown and withered, and the people I purchased Him from said it was because He is Potassium deficient, which is a little weird considering He is a Banana plant. That is a little weird but I guess if everyone was normal the world would be boring.
-There looks like there is a new leaf coming in. In the center of the top of the plant there is a fresh, beautiful green coiled leaf

The plant tab thingy that is sticking in the dirt when you attain a new plant says it is a Musa, or "Little Prince." It goes on to say 'Please use the plant responsibly!' (I would like to know how to not use this plant responsibly...) It says to keep the soil evenly moist to prevent leaves from drying out (duh).


Homework: So I guess I have to go look for proper vitamins or fertilizer for Nanners since he is a little deficient in all of His important vitamins. (Maybe when Nanners is feeling better I can take him back to school in order to make more friends and meet more guys. =p )
I will be also researching the Musa Banana plant and how to raise it properly to be a big strong 'Little Prince.' Untill next time, dream about big bananas that Nanners will one day produce. Peace out.

The Beginning

Hi. My name is Dani. I currently am studying Geology at a University in the western part of the states. Recently I have been trying to decide what to minor in. I am considering Biology so this winter semester I began to take Biology classes. One of my classes is a Botany class. For extra credit in the class we were assigned to obtain and raise a plant for the semester, so that is what I am doing.

I purchased a Banana plant for $15 today. I have to record and write about my plant throughout the semester. If it is still alive at the end, I receive extra credit. If it dies (which it may) I apparently get nothing.

Join with me on the exciting adventure of raising my Banana plant I appropriately named Nanners. It is now not just a plant I have to watch over for the semester, it is a beloved friend.