SANDHILL CRANES, FINALLY!

After three years we finally had some Sandhill Cranes visit

The Great Freeze of 2018

Wow, time flies, I haven't posted any banana pictures since November 2017 since the weather has been amazing and we've been doing all kinds of projects outside in the beautiful 75-80 degree weather every weekend (actually, every Sunday since I have been working every Saturday...).  The bananas have been epic in size, health, and beauty, and I've just been enjoying them rather than photographing them.

Every January here in Melbourne, Florida, it gets COLD.  We hadn't had a freeze since 2014, and I guess I always hope for the best (no more freezes, no more hurricanes...  I'm 0 for 2 now with my "hoping"!).  But it was bound to happen, and the good thing is that now I'm confident that my bananas and papayas (and all of the tropical plants for that matter) can put up with 30 degrees F for a few hours for a few nights in a row and survive.

The banana leaves are a different story... they all suffered some sort of damage.  Mark and I did a survey around the park yesterday, and we agreed that the bananas that did well through this freeze need to be propagated, duplicated and spread everywhere... they're the ones that REALLY belong here!

Here's some examples of frost damage from the 30 degree low temperature 1/4/2018 (and a couple of 30 something nights which followed).

This is another Mona Lisa, added to the banana circle late summer 2017 to replace a wimpy banana.  She got a tree limb as a crutch after the hurricane to brace her and to allow her to strengthen.  She's fine overall but her leaves got melted in the freeze.  Other banana circle leaves had varying levels of damage, but the overall plant is fine.

Big Mick (actual lineage unknown) is gorgeous, really tall and tropical.  His leaves (upper left) just melted in the freeze, with rusty brown replacing healthy green.  Oddly, though, his big pup, Baby Mick, looks great!  What cold, was it cold?  LOL

This banana plant is fruiting and would probably have bananas ready to eat by February if the freeze hadn't happened.  We're leaving the bananas on the tree - they're gorgeous, they might be ok, and we'll never know unless we leave them there and see if they ripen into delicious bananas.  This is another "what kind of banana is this?" plant.  Check the rusty leaves out...

Big Mike (Gros Michel) did great through the freeze.  He's our entry banana, we love him and enjoy his huge leaves.  Ok, the leaves got pretty messed up, but he and his babies are fine.  He'd have more pups, but I harvested three pups a few weeks ago.  They're in pots in the back, looking just fine after the freeze.  Big Mike is HUGE - like 16 feet tall - and he's one of the bananas we want all over the property.

This is Mona of early Mona Lisa batch in 2016... well, Mona mat, that is, since the original Mona Lisa made delicious bananas last year and these are her pups.  The three pups from Mona look TERRIBLE after the freeze...  wow, she's probably the worst of them all.  We'll be watching to see what happens.  But my bet is that all of them are fine, they'll grow new leaves, and we'll forget about this ugly moment in their history. 

Lows this past week were:

1/4/2018    30 degrees F
1/5/2018    34 degrees F
1/6/2018    38 degrees F

And right now, it's 69 degrees F outside and I'm back in a tank top :)