AN "APEELING" EXPERIMENT--Banana That Is

We didn't have a lot of excess energy for planting flowers in front of the house this year, but I did want a little spot of color during the summer, so we planted one solitary red geranium. All summer long it has held its own, sometimes shining like a beacon against the brown and green of its surroundings. In the last couple of days I noticed that it was down to one flower and wasn't producing any more flower buds. It appeared to be blooming its last. I'm not quite ready to let it go though, so I decided to try an experiment. I put a banana peel in water and let it soak over night. This morning I watered the geranium with the soaking water. (If the jar looks crooked, it's because it is. I set it on the slanting hood of Betsey's car to take the picture. ^o^).In the past we have been able to produce flower buds on roses, zucchini, morning glories, and peas when it looked like they weren't going to form. Sometimes our homemade compost in the garden is too high in nitrogen because of the large percentage of kitchen scraps and grass clippings that we put in it. Leaves will help balance that in a compost pile, but they are not always available year around. When we wanted flower buds in the garden right away, we found that burying banana peels in the ground near the plants, caused them to start blooming within a week or so.

I have no idea if a banana peel soaked in water will do the same thing, or if it will work this late in the season, but I thought it was worth a try. Yes, I could use Miracle Grow or some other commercial bloom-boosting formula, but I thought this would be more fun.

ADDENDUM added Feb. 2009: The experiment worked very well. Five bud clusters were produced in just a few weeks, but it proved to be too late in the season for them to have a chance to bloom.

I dug the geranium up and took it inside. I did my best to keep it going, but it slowly died. We just don't have enough light in our house for a plant that likes full sun. Also, when I knew I was going to dig it up, I should have pinched the flower buds off. It would have been painful for me, but if I had done that the energy might have gone to the roots instead, and perhaps it would have survived.

Unfortunately I really killed it when I poured some full-strength banana peel water on it. I soaked a banana peel in a jar of water for two days. Then I just poured some on the geranium right out of the jar. When I used the banana peel water on the geranium while it was outside I diluted it quite a bit with water first. Full strength it was too strong, and burned the roots. The poor thing didn't have a chance.

Well, it's one of those things that I learned a lot from. And I am very impressed with using banana peel water to help plants bloom. ^o^ I will definitely be doing more with this.