more bananas
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Ben McNeill
Jun 23, 2026, 6:05:07 PMJun 23
to permaculturehb
Just to add to the banana theme, here's a few bananas at my place in Waimarama early this morning.
Pisang Awak
Ross Coulson
Jun 23, 2026, 9:49:56 PMJun 23
to Ben McNeill, permaculturehb
👍thank you for the info
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Ben McNeill
Jun 23, 2026, 9:54:56 PMJun 23
to permaculturehb
Brazilian banana, my favourite. Also called Lady Finger (Australia), Pome, Apple (Hawaii), Prata (Brazil).
Ross Coulson
Jun 23, 2026, 9:56:44 PMJun 23
to Ben McNeill, permaculturehb
Hey Ben are you able to purchase any of the above through Whangārei or anywhere else in New Zealand
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Louise Phillips
Jun 23, 2026, 11:31:12 PMJun 23
to Ross Coulson, Ben McNeill, permaculturehb
Hi All,
There are Banana trials going on through the NZ Tree Crops association and growers up north that are selling plants. Two of those spoke at the last tree crops conference in Hamilton. I know that they have come down this way at least to Ongaonga delivering plants.
There is also quite a bit of research and info about different varieties.
Geoffrey Mansell (Kotare Farm) and Roslyn Norrie (both Tree Crop members) gave an excellent presentation at conference on Bananas including good summaries of varieties in NZ and Geoffrey has delivered plants down this way.
The Hawke's Bay branch is presently applying for 3 members to have banana trials as part of research on Climate, Fertilizer and flowering times.
Ngā mihi 
Louise Phillips
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maureen skilton
Jun 24, 2026, 12:35:22 AMJun 24
to Louise Phillips, Ross Coulson, Ben McNeill, permaculturehb
Great crop. I'm impressed
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Ben McNeill
Jun 24, 2026, 1:19:17 AMJun 24
to maureen skilton, Louise Phillips, Ross Coulson, permaculturehb
Louise, I should be surprised HB TCA are wanting to do banana trials, but given TCAs history of tring to reinvent the wheel I'm not. Bananas are the world's number one commodity fruit, it has been extensively studied for many decades, and TCA will gain nothing from studying it in HB apart from inevitably eventually proving it is not a viable commercial crop when grown outside. It's fine to grow for backyard consumption, and even possibly sell excess at farmers markets, but we don't need any money spent on studying that. The banana is not a serious commercial contender anwhere in NZ, and certainly not in HB.
Anyone interested in NZ bananas could consider facebook pages Bananas of New Zealand Aotearoa, Tai Pukenga banana and papaya project, and Banana Growers of NZ (the most active). It will soon become apparent that the only people pushing the potential for a NZ banana industry are also people who make money selling banana plants. And that none of them have any experience in banana growing outside NZ, and as such have no idea how much they don't know.
Ross if you're looking for bananas in Whangarei area you can talk to Hugh Rose at Land of the Lotus, Geoff Mansell at Kotare Farm, and possibly Aaron at Tallyman Bananas, who all sell banana plants. Be warned though banana id is notoriously unreliable in NZ and I'd say the majority of plants are mislabeled, plus there are a lot of very similar pisang awak variants being sold under a myriad of different names.
Anyone interested in NZ bananas could consider facebook pages Bananas of New Zealand Aotearoa, Tai Pukenga banana and papaya project, and Banana Growers of NZ (the most active). It will soon become apparent that the only people pushing the potential for a NZ banana industry are also people who make money selling banana plants. And that none of them have any experience in banana growing outside NZ, and as such have no idea how much they don't know.
Ross if you're looking for bananas in Whangarei area you can talk to Hugh Rose at Land of the Lotus, Geoff Mansell at Kotare Farm, and possibly Aaron at Tallyman Bananas, who all sell banana plants. Be warned though banana id is notoriously unreliable in NZ and I'd say the majority of plants are mislabeled, plus there are a lot of very similar pisang awak variants being sold under a myriad of different names.
Setha Davenport
Jun 25, 2026, 7:37:10 PMJun 25
to Ben McNeill, maureen skilton, Louise Phillips, Ross Coulson, permaculturehb
Thanks Ben and Louise for all the info. I may have been inspired to try planting some, although we get a lot of frosts.
May I ask Ben, do those areas where your bananas grow get frosted?
Many thanks.
From: permacu...@googlegroups.com <permacu...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ben McNeill <ben...@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2026 1:18 AM
To: maureen skilton <skiltond...@gmail.com>
Cc: Louise Phillips <louiseph...@gmail.com>; Ross Coulson <ross.co...@gmail.com>; permaculturehb <permacu...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Permaculture HB] Re: more bananas
Sent: Wednesday, June 24, 2026 1:18 AM
To: maureen skilton <skiltond...@gmail.com>
Cc: Louise Phillips <louiseph...@gmail.com>; Ross Coulson <ross.co...@gmail.com>; permaculturehb <permacu...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [Permaculture HB] Re: more bananas
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Ben McNeill
Jun 26, 2026, 1:57:53 AMJun 26
to Setha Davenport, maureen skilton, Louise Phillips, Ross Coulson, permaculturehb
Hi Setha,
You may recall you visited me years ago when you came to collect organic wheat straw. I'm growing the bananas further down the hill below the house. The site is reliably frost free.
Bananas are a bit different from most other fruit trees in that the Tbase is also the sapflow ceasing point, and once banana sapflow stops then sap coagulation occurs which damages the fruit. There are a few bananas with comparatively low Tbase of around 11C but most are 14 or 15C or even higher for the truly tropical adapted ones. In practice the sapflow matching Tbase means for every hour below about 11C (or 15C for some bananas) there will be damage to the fruit, which gets correspondingly large as the hours below Tbase increase. In subtropical climates winter ripened fruit is always inferior, and cooler climates are that much worse off.
For home growers in NZ a site that has at least moderate summer heat and never falls below 4C is warm enough to produce fruit like Maureen has grown, which is still great eating for backyarders.
Usually a moderate frost will kill all above ground biomass, but it will come away again in spring or summer heat is sufficient. Ideally bananas need 27C average daytime highs all year around, but in the subtropics they can still be commercially viable in places that only have 27C (or higher) daytime highs for 8 months. This is why NZ will never have a commercial banana industry outside greenhouse production or short of extreme global warming, as there is not a single official climate station in NZ that has 27C mean daytime temperature for even one month of the year.
There are banana plantations in Northland, but they all experience winter chill injury and far lower producing than would be considered viable in any other country. Most of Northland has a mean annual air temperature between 14-16C, with a small coastal section of the Far North between 16-17C. Hawkes Bay is mostly between 11-15C MAT (colder in the highest hills obviously). In Australia the coldest commercial banana growing areas have MAT around 19-20C, with the main production area being around 24-5C (Cairns, Innisfail etc).
We can grow bananas in HB in the warmest sites where they need perfect shelter, all day sun, no frost, heaps of mulch, lots of water over summer, and as much potassium as possible, after which they are capable of producing a moderate amount of sub-commercial quality bananas that are still pretty good eating.
You may recall you visited me years ago when you came to collect organic wheat straw. I'm growing the bananas further down the hill below the house. The site is reliably frost free.
Bananas are a bit different from most other fruit trees in that the Tbase is also the sapflow ceasing point, and once banana sapflow stops then sap coagulation occurs which damages the fruit. There are a few bananas with comparatively low Tbase of around 11C but most are 14 or 15C or even higher for the truly tropical adapted ones. In practice the sapflow matching Tbase means for every hour below about 11C (or 15C for some bananas) there will be damage to the fruit, which gets correspondingly large as the hours below Tbase increase. In subtropical climates winter ripened fruit is always inferior, and cooler climates are that much worse off.
For home growers in NZ a site that has at least moderate summer heat and never falls below 4C is warm enough to produce fruit like Maureen has grown, which is still great eating for backyarders.
Usually a moderate frost will kill all above ground biomass, but it will come away again in spring or summer heat is sufficient. Ideally bananas need 27C average daytime highs all year around, but in the subtropics they can still be commercially viable in places that only have 27C (or higher) daytime highs for 8 months. This is why NZ will never have a commercial banana industry outside greenhouse production or short of extreme global warming, as there is not a single official climate station in NZ that has 27C mean daytime temperature for even one month of the year.
There are banana plantations in Northland, but they all experience winter chill injury and far lower producing than would be considered viable in any other country. Most of Northland has a mean annual air temperature between 14-16C, with a small coastal section of the Far North between 16-17C. Hawkes Bay is mostly between 11-15C MAT (colder in the highest hills obviously). In Australia the coldest commercial banana growing areas have MAT around 19-20C, with the main production area being around 24-5C (Cairns, Innisfail etc).
We can grow bananas in HB in the warmest sites where they need perfect shelter, all day sun, no frost, heaps of mulch, lots of water over summer, and as much potassium as possible, after which they are capable of producing a moderate amount of sub-commercial quality bananas that are still pretty good eating.
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