My Dwarf Banana is flowering!

There was all manner of terrible titles I could have given this post. Please appreciate my restraint.

It is a good indication of how distracted I’ve been over the past week when I say that I noticed this last Saturday

A banana flower, 20 months after planting the tiny pup. This is a dwarf cavendish banana, and it was sold as a ‘cool climate’ banana in Bunnings.

Over the week I’ve been checking the progress daily as the flower petals unfurl to expose more hands of tiny bananas. This is what it looked like a week ago:

And today:

It looks like some of the bananas have been bruised in the unfurling process. I read that they are extremely delicate at this stage and even leaves brushing against them in the wind is enough to damage them.

At first I was very worried about the angle of the flower and whether it was going to grow over (or right into) the side fence. Luckily it seems to have turned downwards fairly quickly.

P estimates that I might have somewhere between 150 and 200 bananas on the bunch. Should keep us in smoothies for a while!