Beginner care guide for the Red Banana. Ensete ventricosum 'Maurelii' #gardening #garden #plants

Welcome everyone. Today's video all about the red banana. So this is Encete Ventricosum Moralei. This is one of my absolute favourite plants and it's a lot easier to grow in the summer than you think. Today's video we're gonna go ahead, we're gonna plant a couple in the garden. I'm gonna show you exactly where I'm gonna plant them, why I'm gonna plant them in that certain position and just enjoy it because this is one of the plants that I've been waiting to come into stores. So I'm gonna give you a bit of a care guide as we go through stuff. So without further ado, let's get into today's video. So the red banana is not a hardy banana unfortunately, unlike this Mucha Bazhou. So this is the standard hardy green banana. So if you're looking for something that you can leave out all winter and actually do wrap up to keep this lovely growth, then this is something for you. But if you're looking to grow something different, particularly at a price of just £6.50 right in B&M stores at the moment, because they are a lot more money than that in garden centres and other stores. I've seen them upwards of about £40 just recently for a little bit bigger than what I'd purchased granted, but for just £6.50 you can have something different growing in the summer. Now if you're willing to treat it as a bedding plant, although you can overwinter it and we'll talk about that a little bit later on in the season, today's video is just going to be a bit of a care guide about getting it going in the summer. So if you're a beginner gardener, I'd highly recommend that you buy this plant because, and hear me out right, people will be spending money on things like geraniums and fuchsias, siphonias and all your summer bedding plants that are literally going to die once the frost comes here. Of course you can overwinter geraniums and fuchsias and you can also overwinter this with a little bit of, a little bit of hassle should I say right, because that's probably the best word for it and I'm not going to lie to you unless you can just pop them into the house somewhere for the winter. Treat it as a summer bedding plant and just enjoy it for the summer. I promise you it will actually give you a lot, a lot of joy and if you're new to gardening and you really want to catch the bug then this, this is the plant for you. Now a lot of people will say well red ansettes they aren't for the beginner gardener, I disagree. I think they're very, very easy to grow over the summer and if you can treat it as a summer bedding plant then why not. They're a lot like a canna lily when it comes to a leaf but they're a lot more flamboyant when it comes to sort of their growth structure, how much growth they put on. You'll be able to get it to a reasonable size this year with a little bit of care. Now we'll talk a little bit about that and then I'm going to show you where these are going. This is a complete sun lover, the red banana, just like the other bananas are right. Absolutely love the sun, you can grow this in a pot or you can grow it in the ground. Now the only thing you need for this is multi-purpose compost and I would recommend, and if you guys have watched the channel for a while you'll know I absolutely love chicken manure, I would recommend that you go out and buy a box of chicken manure. You can pick them up from a B&M store or home bargains, anything like that from around £4.49 and the box will last you for the whole summer. I actually picked up a brand called which means six times the nutrients. I talk about it a lot on my videos but I can't tell you how good it is. I think I paid £9.99 at Trenton Garden Centre, Blue Diamond, £9.99 for a really big tub of it and it will last me all year. So you can give it like a tomato feed, something like that, and you do that once a week but I'd recommend you just pick up, for the sake of about £5, pick up a box of chicken manure and then just simply add that in every three weeks or so. Now if you are keeping it in a pot you'll definitely need to water it a lot. This is a very hungry, very thirsty plant. If it's going in the ground then you're going to still do the same right. I would feed it, if you're going to something like a tomorite or a seaweed feed, you'll be wanting to feed it every week. Just like you want to be feeding your hanging baskets and your other plants, this is nothing out of the ordinary if you want it to look good. I'm talking about if you want this to reach its full potential in one year. Of course you can plant it in the ground and just sort of watch it grow and it will will romp away with not a lot of feed but you'll never get the best results out of it, if that makes sense. So I tend to feed my garden a lot and I don't know if you can tell already, we're not even in June at the moment and my garden's really starting to come on with just the simple methods that I use. So if you want it in a pot, it can go in a pot. Just make sure it is double or triple the size of the existing pot that it is in now and if it's going into the ground, don't worry about spacings too much. I quite like things jam-packed in, if that makes sense. This is actually going right at the front of the bed because I don't really care what's behind it. This is going to be a statement plant in my garden. Now eventually this year, so it currently sits maybe two, two and a half feet at the moment, I fully expect to double the size of this, maybe even triple the size of this this season and I am going to take it in the house this year because I've had a couple of red encetes over the years and I've tried to overwinter them outside and do a load of different stuff and it hasn't worked. So yes, they're going in the house this year and I'm not going to play games because I want to keep a couple of really good size ones. So hopefully that covers basis for just getting started with you guys, right? So like I say, I have a lot of new subscribers, so thank you very much to every single one of you. A lot of newbies, a lot of new gardeners, which I can only say just give this plant a go. I promise you it doesn't matter what style garden you have, you'll enjoy growing this over the summer. Treat it like a summer bedding plant, you can always buy another one next year for £6.50. I know how that sounds, I'm not saying leave it out to let it die because I might get some grief on here, but I'm trying to get people into the hobby and I'm also trying to get people into the sort of more tropical style stuff because I think it's really exciting. So yes, that's enough waffling. I absolutely love this plant. I've been waiting for it to come in. It's coming a little bit earlier than normal. I think that heat wave has really pushed the buyers out and I'm very grateful for it, right? I'm very grateful that the growers have pushed it out early because this is absolutely fine to go out. Now I did a lot of work on this bed here in the winter and the one reason why I've curved it out like I have is because I always knew my red Encete was going to sit proud right at the front. Now although it's quite small at the moment, it won't take long to put some growth on, particularly if we continue to have some really lovely weather here in the UK. As mentioned, complete sun lover, loves a really heavy drink. In the summer months I'll be watering this most days, like I water my garden anyway. But yeah, so I've got a couple of different ones. I've actually picked up three. It always says planting threes. I'm not one of those guys who goes and says right I'm having three of them and three of them and three of them. It just so happens that because it was £6.50 and I kind of got in my mind that they were going to be about £12.50, I was only ever going to buy one and this was going to sit here. But because I am who I am, I purchased three because it's kind of in the budget, but I'm officially broke now. Anyway, let's get this planted up. Now I will mention, just for record, it's only eight o'clock in the morning here, so I could either wait until we go in full shade and plant up. I certainly wouldn't recommend planting up in this heat throughout the day. However, it's still early, so I'm going to get the planting done. I'm going to give it a bit of a watering in and I'm going to let them enjoy the sunshine for the day. So there's the roots. As you can see, they're really healthy. Now this side of the garden is quickly becoming my favourite side, right? It's the one that I've spent a little bit of time on just recently and the reason why I've planted... So this side of the garden is quickly becoming my favourite side. I've spent a bit of time on it recently and over winter I've planted a couple of Euonymus. These are called Evergold, I believe, and these are a lovely, hardy, evergreen shrub. And the reason why I didn't plant them any closer together is through the summer months, I actually want some really lovely, interesting plants growing in between them, i.e. like my bananas, I've got canna lilies and also gingers and have some real inspiration. So I went to Florida a few years ago and I went to a place called Volcano Bay, which is just a water park, but it's the Imagineers there. I know Imagineers is really Disney, but Volcano Bay is a universal park and they've just absolutely nailed it. I love this style of gardening and it's an absolute treat to sort of walk around. So I got a little bit of inspiration from there. As these get bigger, these are going to be clipped into shapes and then we're going to have some really soft planting in between, like these bananas. So I'm going to go ahead, plant them right in between and I've spent a lot of time getting the soil up to scratch, adding organic matter, fish blood and bone, bone meal, even grow more, and as you guys know, chicken manure, right? Anyway, enough talking, let's get this in. So though you can't really even see it planted just there, I've got some really lovely riceness to go in at the back. Until that happens, I'm not doing any more planting on this, I've got to get this painted. But you know, I've spent very little money on these plants and they'll give me such a lot of joy over the summer months, right? I'm going to jam pack, plant it like absolutely crazy, so I'm really excited to see what I can actually do over this side of the garden. I'll just spin you around and I'll show you what's going on around here, because I feel like this side of the garden is starting to take off with the evergreens and the brand new olive. So that gap we've just seen with the new red banana, I cannot wait to see what I can do in that corner, as the other sides of the garden have really started to come together. I'm actually not going to plant my third one, I'm just going to hang on. I'm not entirely sure where it's going, I may even, I've got a family birthday coming up so I may even hold it back. It's windy isn't it today? Camera's going like all over the place. There we have it, like I mentioned, I'm not going to talk about winter, I don't want, I don't even want to think about it. There is lots of videos however out there as to how to overwinter these beautiful plants, but right now I'm just going to enjoy the summer. I'll perhaps do a video a little bit later on, because I know there's a couple of different techniques you can do, but I will just be simply taking mine into the house, although the wife doesn't know it yet. So well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Anyway, if you enjoyed it then please give it a big thumbs up as it really does help the channel out, and drop a comment down below as it helps share it out to others who love gardening, just like we do. Until tomorrow, I will see you in the garden, you may even see that painted, you take care.