Ok. I am sure that this has probably been asked in here a hundred times,but i cant find an answer for it. I did do a search. What fertilizer do I use on my young banana plants? I have 2 from big corms, an 'Ice Cream' and a 'Mysore', they are in the ground and about 3 feet tall already, in 2 months, I feed them all Miracle Grow, 20-20-20 liquid. They are doing great, oh I am in Ft.Lauderdale Fla. The 3 young plants that I bought as growing plants are in pots for another month or so, nearly 2 feet tall, and they are doing great, they also get the Miracle grow. Like once a month I just flood them with like 2 gallons of mixed Miracle Grow and then just keep them watered well, they all still wilt in the sun by mid-day from the heat, and I don't think you can over water bananas....can you? So I make sure they get as much water as they like, and they are growing great!

When I use to grow bananas here, years ago, I would basically just throw 'lawn fertilizer', something like 8-8-8, all around the lawn and around the banana clumps that I had, and they grew fine and finally fruited. So it took like 5 years to get a Cavendish type banana...I had huge trees but it took forever to get fruit. Now that I am trying to grow named varieties,and want to get fruit asap, and take good care of them, I keep seeing all sorts of special 'banana fertilizers' that also cost a small fortune for small bags.

My basic question is I guess...should I just go back to the 'lawn fertilizer' and just throw it all around the plants in the ground, and when I plant the ones in the pots into the ground, do the same,yes we feed the lawn and most of our plants year round...there is barely a difference in temps. or heat....except in January for a week if we get lucky! So the bananas will grow all year. OR is there a special banana fertilizer that I can find at Home Depot/Lowes/Sears, someplace easy to get to, not order online and get like 2 lbs and spend a fortune on a tiny bag. Or is there something I can add to the common fertilizer,like Epsom salts or something, to get nice strong plants and fruit? The big corm plants I can just about bet will fruit next summer,...the smaller potted ones I think I have another season to go through to get fruit..they are 'Ice Cream', 'GoldFinger' and 'Praying hands'.

So...any opinions especially from fellow south Fla growers, on what to give these trees. I am going through the Miracle grow pretty fast, so I figure dry fertilizer is the next step, I saw one fertilizer online that was listed 'back in stock' as 0-10-10 and it was advertised like they just discovered gold! But the price for like 2 lbs was silly! Is that ratio of some kind of importance? Or is it for northern growers only? Sorry to sound so dense, but they grow so easily here, it is getting them to fruit that is a bit harder,...so I figure if I feed them right this time, I wont be waiting for years to get any fruit.