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| Best Eating, Most Fragrant & Best Kind of Banana |
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| Q: What is the best tasting banana? |
| A: This is a difficult question to answer. Just as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, taste is in the mouth of the beholder. According to our taste buds, the Mysore, Raja Puri and Ice Cream bananas are the best. But every desert banana is someone’s favorite, and every cooking banana is someone’s favorite. |
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| Q: What is the best cooking banana? |
| A: This is another difficult question. For “tostones” (fried plantains), the Giant Plantain gets high ratings. For sweet plantains (Maduros), the Giant Plantain and Saba are rated tops. |
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| Q: What is the most fragrant plumeria? |
| A: This is hard to say since nearly all of the hybrid plumeria are fragrant. One of the most fragrant is the Dwarf Deciduous. And the Moragnes are very fragrant. What you really need to do is pick out the fragrance you really like the most, such as coconut, frangipani, lemon or citrus, and make your choice accordingly. |
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| Q: What is the most fragrant ginger? |
| A: The white butterfly, Hedychium coronarium. Nearly all of the Hedychium species and hybrids are fragrant. In general, the whiter the flower, the more fragrant the plant, and the redder the flower the less fragrant the plant. There are certain other ginger flowers that are fragrant, including Kaempferia rotunda, Siphonochilus decora and Siphonochilus kirkii. And there are many gingers in the genera Zingiber, Curcuma and Alpinia that have aromatic leaves, stems and/or rhizomes. |
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| Q: If I could get only one kind of banana, which one would you recommend? |
| A: Based on customer orders, the Raja Puri is our most popular eating banana and the Musa basjoo is our most popular ornamental. Our most popular dwarf is the Super Dwarf Cavendish. Our most popular cooking banana (plantain) is the Giant Plantain. |
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| Q: If I could get only one kind of plumeria, which one would you recommend? |
| A: The Dwarf Pink would be our choice, because it is a true dwarf that never gets taller than 6 feet, even after 8 or 10 years. It is evergreen, meaning it doesn’t lose its leaves. It flowers all year, if not exposed to freezing temperatures. And it can even flower indoors in high light. And because of its slow growth, 6 inches or so per year, it lends itself to being containerized. |
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| Q: Why won’t my banana plant flower and fruit? |
| A: When we get this question, the first thing we ask is how long have you had it? Bananas need 9-15 months of non-freezing temperatures to flower and another 2-3 months to fruit. So if you are growing it outside in the ground you should be in zone 10 or higher, or if in zone 9, you need a mild winter. The second thing we ask is, do you have it in full sun? Bananas need full sun. The third question is, are you fertilizing it well? Bananas are heavy feeders, and they need a fertilizer high in potassium (K) such as our Stokes Tropicals’ Banana Blend (6-2-12). Bananas also are heavy drinkers. So, with 9-15 months of non-freezing weather, plenty of sun, plenty of high K fertilizer and plenty of water, you’ll get the flowers and fruit you expected. |
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| Q: Why won’t my plumerias bloom? |
| A: Our first question is, do you have it growing in full sun? Plumerias need full sun. Then we ask, are you fertilizing it with a high phosphorus (P) fertilizer? To encourage blooming, a fertilizer such as Stokes Tropicals’ Plumeria Blend (8-14-10) is ideal. Rooted plumerias cuttings can bloom the first year if they are terminal and contain enough plant auxin. And all plumerias cuttings should flower in the second year with proper sunlight, fertilizer and care. |
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| Q: Will my plant survive if it arrives with brown, yellow or damaged leaves? |
| A: Your plants will almost certainly arrive with brown, yellow or damaged (bent or broken) leaves. Uprooting your selected tropical plants from their optimum growing environment, cleaning them, spraying them for potential pests, dipping rhizomes, or roots in fungicide, then packing them inside a dark box, surrounding them by shredded paper and/or banding to box, then shipping via truck and/or airplane to you with greatly varying temperatures and humidity (none of which are optimum), then waiting for you on your doorstep, and then waiting for you to unpack and plant it and place it back into its optimum environment. Is it any wonder that some leaves and stems are damaged, brown or yellow? The wonder is that a tropical plant, or any plant for that matter, could survive such treatment. However, our plants have been shipped all over the world with very good survival success. If planted promptly upon receipt in the correct type of potting soil and placed in the correct light conditions and not over-watered or over-fertilized, they will revive quickly and put out new growth to replace yellowed or damaged leaves. The single factor that kills most plants is over-watering. Plant roots need oxygen: they cannot get oxygen with roots standing in water unless they are water plants. The second most-common cause of killing a plant is too much fertilizer. Start out slowly until you see the plant responding favorably by putting out new green leaves and developing a good root system. Too much care can be deadly for an otherwise healthy plant. |
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| Q: What is the best time of the year to order tropical plants? |
| A: There is no best time. It depends on where you live and where you are going to grow them. If you live in U.S.D.A. zone 10 or higher, there won’t be any freezes to worry about, so you can get plants and plant them at any time of the year. If you have a greenhouse or you intend to grow them inside your home, you also can get them at any time of the year no matter where you live. And if you order rhizomes in the winter or spring, when they are dormant, they safely can be stored for future planting. |
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| Q: How do you ship your plants? |
| A: Unless you otherwise specify, we ship by UPS, FedEx or U.S. Postal Service, which generally takes 2-6 days to arrive anywhere in the U.S. If you require even faster service, we will ship via UPS or FedEx overnight or 2nd day for an additional charge. Actual cost of shipping is billed to the customer. |
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| Q: How long will it be before my plants are shipped to me after ordering? |
| A: We will try our best to get orders out as fast as we can. Depending on season it may take up to 15 days to process and ship your order. In some cases we are able to process and ship your order within 1-3 business days, depending on available quantities. |
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| Q: Do you ship plants all year? |
| A: Yes, depending on availability of plant material and time of year. Of course, if the particular plant you order is dormant and is in the rhizome stage, we can’t supply you with a growing plant. And we can’t supply you with a rhizome when it is a growing plant. And we generally won’t ship plants into areas where temperatures are below freezing because of the risk of freezing, unless customer assumes all risk. |
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| Q: How large will my plant grow? |
| A: This is a very difficult question to answer. There are so many variables that affect plant growth. The finished size is based on the genetic instructions of the plant and is influenced by soil type, moisture levels, optimum light conditions, whether it is ground planted or container planted (and container size), pruning, fertilization, altitude, growing temperatures (maximum, minimum and average), humidity and latitude. Growing a tropical plant in the North is different from growing the same plant in the South. Plants in the ground always grow bigger than those planted in a container. When we provide a range of heights in our plant descriptions, consider the lower height for containers and the greater height for in-the-ground plantings. With a little experimentation on your part, you can find the ideal growing habitat for your tropical plant. |
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