Bring the Tropics to your Garden- Grow Cassabanana!

 

Every so often, even I, your ever-talented host, fail.

 One of those occasions happened this year with a plant I was really excited about and intended to write a comprehensive article on growing it. This plant was Cassabanana, Sicana odorifera.

 It’s not a banana at all, but it’s still quite tropical and nearly unheard of in the United States. It’san herbaceous perennial vine, but can be grown as an annual….where? I’m not sure. The information on the plant is so sketchy, it’s very hard to find any kind of information on it. All I know is several copy-and-paste garden websites listed it as a perennial in the tropics and an annual in “most climates.” Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

 The fruit is long and cylindrical. Think overgrown cucumber, with a very tough skin and what is said to be a lovely aromatic smell. In fact, many people  use the long-lasting fruit to freshen the smell of a room.

  The fruit is either cooked prematurely like squash (which I wasn’t interested in since I was drowning in squash of all kinds this year), or allowed to ripen and used fresh, in drinks, pies, or preserves. It’s said to have a sweet tropical flavor. Again, whatever that’s supposed to mean

Growing Cassabanana

 My own experimentations lead me to believe you stand an okay chance trying to grow this sucker down to USDA Zone 6. It thrives in hot summer weather, and for me, didn’t do much till summer arrived. Afterwards it needs a lengthy ripening time before frost. Because of this, I would nominate this plant for starting indoors early.

 The vine may be too long and cumbersome for very small gardens. It needs a lot of sprawl space or a tall trellis. It’s said to grow up to fifty feet, but mine sure didn’t. My trellis was short, but I let it grow up and down on it, resulting in a jumbled mess that at least kept the fruit off the ground.

 Seed is not too difficult to come by, several tropical-oriented companies offer seed for sale. My seed germinated very poorly- about 20%. It could have just been old seed, since most members of the gourd family germinate in no time flat. 20% equaled two seedlings, which for the amount of space the plant takes up, was no less than I needed. I was still a little bummed. I paid for ten seed, I wanted ten plants.

 Nothing but trouble thereafter. While transplanting the very slow growing seedlings, I half cracked the stem of one plant. Ouch. This one actually survived but was set back for some time.

  It grew slowly to start, until the heat kicked in. Then it took off. It didn’t produce very many female flowers, but all of them set fruit.

 The fruit grew splendidly into a rather large cylindrical shape. It began changing color from green to yellow. Then from yellow to purple-ish. What followed was a week of solid rain, and the fruit all split open. Bugs quickly found their way inside and ruined whatever might have been edible.

 Fruit was still setting, so I hadn’t lost all hope, but then came an infestation of squash bugs, that killed many of the flowers before I vacummed them all up (more on vacumming pests in a future post).  Afterwards, fruit was still setting, but the ripening period for this fruit is so long that none of them made it till frost. I was so disgusted I didn’t even bother harvesting the immature fruit for cooking. I wanted ripe cassabanana, and I won’t be completely happy till I get it.

 Bottom line? It didn’t work out so well for me, but that’s no reason for you not to give it a try. Up to USDA Aone 6, at least. I’ll be giving these guys another go-round next year. Let’s hope for better things!