Winter Banana

[H20fwler]

I planted a Winter Banana this spring to see what it was like. Planted it in my home orchard.
Started out as a three foot bare root whip with two main leaders. I didn’t trim the second leader off being first year and I want to save the smaller right side leader branch for grafting when I cut it to make a few more of these.

So far the tree seems precocious, it’s branching out nice, pretty clean and tried to throw a few apples. I left one on just because I wanted to taste it!
I water it when I can with about seven gallons of well water a couple times a month if we don’t have much rain.

My kids and grandkids are pretty excited about this one because it’s unique and I’ve got a few three year old redflesh with some apples on them this year, pink pearl, odessa redflesh and a geneva.
So now my grown kids are all about having an apple tasting day…sounds good to me.

Do any of you grow the winter banana?
Does it really taste like banana?

 

[Telemark]

Mine is doing poorly in Ontario. Two steps forward, one step back. I will probably have to move it. But it's hanging in there so far. No fruit yet, of course.

 

[Bill]

You better put a small cage around that apple! You're going to be pissed when a coon beats you to the taste test.

 

[H20fwler]

So, after supper tonight we went for a walk around the pond and decided today was Winter Banana tasting night.
It’s been very dry and cool here so decided to give it a try before a bird or coon beat us to it or it dropped and fed a bunny.







The lone apple had finished out about 3/4 bright red with back half 1/4 yellow. I would say it was ripe, very crisp with a good crunch. Wife and I both tried it and really wanted to “taste” some kind of banana like flavor.
To us it tasted like a honey crisp more than anything. We didn’t get any banana flavor that we could describe. It was a good eater, very surprising how fast the core that I saved wanted to turn brownish…within five minutes.

Maybe in a few years as tree gets bigger apples will be more true to hyped taste?

 

[H20fwler]

We may have been a little early picking? If it would have hung longer maybe banana flavor might have come through better?

 

[bigboreblr]

That one of those varieties that taste better after some storage?

 

[Barndog56]

I've got 4 on my tree, still a little bit more green than yours was. I'll post back here after we test it.

 

[SwampCat]

I have a summer banana. It has produced apples for the last two years. It has the most susceptible apples to brown rot of any apple I have - or peach. Even with regular spraying, every apple last year, and all but two this year - were ruined because of brown rot.