Mississippi Squad

[JohnAndSancho]

Bought a new grow bulb. Now I have an extra 5w that'd be great for philodendrons, but nowhere to put it. Oh look, here's an old swing arm floor lamp, I wonder if it bends easily. YEP, it sure did. 

Upgraded from 5w to 35w. I like these Sansi bulbs. They're cheap and have a 5 year warranty. I should be sponsored.

Look at the rootball on this Chamaedorea Elegans. Freebie from Wellspring Gardens. Yeah it's plug sized, but it's nice. Looks better than a lot of big box plants I see. 

Cuban Red, Ensete Marelli, and C. Elegans all potted up. The Cuban was free too but I had to pay for shipping since I didn't spend their $15 minimum. I'll post a YouTube vid later on. 

 

I also bought a power strip with USB and more outlets so I can add heat and a humidifier back there for winter. 

Red Latan has seemed to perk up, but - just to be clear, there's a difference in a grow light 5 feet above you and even part sun. Little sunburned on the oldest leaf that was already browning, but it's less droopy. 

 

I watered everything really good last night when I took the trash out. Just a long deep soak with the mist setting. So of course it rained today. 

 

Oh. And do y'all think I got enough willow or should I go back for more? 😂

 

That'll make lots of willow water and fill plenty of 1g bags. 

 

 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

Well, I dunno what the cutoff for "shorts" is, but I get a lot less views if it's over 3 minutes. Anyway here's some bananas. 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

Ugh. So I cut up the willow branches, and in true John fashion I made sure to get lots of twists and bends and forks and stuff. I put them all in this old auto parts bucket to soak and root. 

 

I cut and broke up tons and tons and tons of little green branches to make willow water to water my seedlings with. I come inside for a minute and go back outside, and this bucket apparently has a crack in the bottom of it, and all the water leaked out. All of the kitty litter pails have holes in them. I can't find another bucket, but guess what I did find? 😂

 

 

Yep! Old Christmas popcorn bucket. Let's see how long this holds water. I'm trying not to use a trash bag for this, but if I got to, I got to. 

 

And I cleaned, by hand, every damn one of these papaya seeds. 

 

I also came across a deal I couldn't say no to. These things are selling like crazy right now, they grow fast, they pup like crazy, and I got 2 12" plants for the price of what one 2" plant sells for, so I kinda had to. Blue java tissue culture bananas. I got 2 of these for $30 shipped. 

 

So knowing my luck, about the time I get pups these will be in Home Depot for $12. Anyway I should have crap tons of various banana pups at the end of next summer regardless. And I should have sellable papayas by January because everyone knows January is tropical plant buying season. 

[JohnAndSancho]

Flood of YouTube links since I seen to have forgotten one from last night and I'm dropping 3 tonight. I am only 2,998,100 views and 476 subscribers away from being able to monetize this channel so that's cool. That's all? Anyway hopefully y'all like these. 

Shop Upgrades and new nanners!

 

Papaya seeds on the mat and what's going on with my sprouts????? 

 

Philodendron/Seed Rack and the kind of empty looking Palm Condo™ with more love for my Mekong Giant. 

https://youtube.com/shorts/-Ngxylnlork?si=jpBFMuYMqHEwIEYI

I'll do the Spider Mite Factory© and maybe the backyard pile tomorrow. Don't judge me on the tall grass. 

 

 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

So after getting really annoyed with an eBay buyer, I decided to do some plant stuff. 

 

I mean, you can't really see them since I added a little more coir and perlite but I had 2 more Sabal Minor sprout. 

 

After watching a YouTube video about cana lilly seeds, I decided mine had done as much as they were gonna do in water. Threw them in some coir, watered lightly with willow water, put a baggie over it. According to YouTube I should have sprouts in like 2 weeks now. Still no papaya after a week though. 

 

I think me and @5am came to the conclusion this was an Orinoco banana and I don't think it's a dwarf from the picture of the parent he showed me. I don't think it's been in this cup a week and look at all these roots! I went ahead and gave it some willow water, too. 

 

I'm gonna have some monster nanners.  

[5am]

4 hours ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I think me and @5am came to the conclusion this was an Orinoco banana and I don't think it's a dwarf from the picture of the parent he showed me. I don't think it's been in this cup a week and look at all these roots!

Glad to see it’s getting comfortable in its new home. 

[JohnAndSancho]

3 minutes ago, 5am said:

Glad to see it’s getting comfortable in its new home. 

Funny you mentioned it. It literally just got a new home. I initially overpotted it, this was the one with practically no roots. It wasn't completely  rootbound, but I was gonna need to do this in a week anyway. Might as well while I'm up. 

[JohnAndSancho]

Well, I didn't take pictures, but there was another overpotted one in the muck soil so now it's in a little cup full of fresh coir and perlite and I went ahead and potted up this GORGEOUS Philodendron Burle Marx too

And I'm pretty sure my P. Elegans is mulch. 

 

And I filled out the paperwork to officially register Sancho's Green Paws with the State of Mississippi. 

[JohnAndSancho]

I have a vision, of 3 or 4 rows of bananas in buckets, on short nursery benches, with about 2 square miles of heavy duty non woven weed fabric underneath and between them, and all of the animals around here being well-behaved and so forth. 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

One week! One week to sprout! Soaked for 3 days and cleaned every damn one of these seeds by hand. 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

More sprouted! I potted a few up. Also got my Waymanlo papaya seeds today. And one of the two blue java bananas I ordered showed up 🙄 they "misread" the packing list, receipt, DMs, order, everything. So we'll see what they do to make it right. I asked them to add an Ensete. We'll see what happens. Will pot it up tonight and probably make a YouTube but now it's all about anxiety and the Cubs. 

[JohnAndSancho]

Bad mood broken banana effed up order but we got papayas for days. Paper towel method is straight butt cheeks and I'm never doing it again. 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

BIG PLANS FOR EXPANSION on a 3rd world budget. 

 

All banana pups will be going into 5 gallon buckets with coir/perlite along an 8 foot bench with (2) 4 feet shop lights above them. Additional bananas will be in the corners elevated off the floor with 400w equivalent Sansi LED bulbs in pendant cords above them. The 10x20 heat mats from the bedroom will be placed along this bench and daisy chained from another thermostat set at 85°, slow germinating seed baggies will be stuffed between buckets on the bench to maximize space. 

 

Giant plastic 6 mil sheet hanging from the ceiling so the in-wall propane heater doesn't have to heat the whole room. Extra buckets filled with water for humidity. Folding table will be topped with plywood for additional strength and lined with 1g pots full of papaya and palm sprouts under LED lights. Other 4x3 foot table will also be lined with papaya in 1g pots lit with Sansi led bulbs. All community seedling pots will be covered in baggies to maintain moisture. 

 

Additional 4 foot bench will be brought in with another 4 foot shop light above it for other various pots. As seedlings outgrow community pots they'll either go into coke bottles (slow growers) or 1 gallon pots. 

 

During the winter I'm also going to pot up the willow and crape myrtle branches, remove more grass, and lay down some cardboard to smother out the grass. Plan is to keep the room at around 75°F with 60%+ humidity or as close as possible to maintain growth as long as possible. 

 

Long term I plan to add more wire racks in here with 2ft lights for philodendrons, more 4 foot lights along the shelves for more palms and banana pups and whatever else I feel like growing. I figure by spring I'll have enough nursery stock to get an inspector out here and obtain my nursery license. 

 

I think Etsy is the move for the tropicals and go local for some stuff. I think this might work. I'm usually wrong when I get a good feeling so there's that, but I'm also a Cubs fan so doom and gloom is the norm combined with the economic uncertainty we all face today, with things like ground beef costing $268 a pound right now, but I can focus on how plants are cheaper than therapy and these bananas grow so fast they're fun to watch. Nice change of pace from months of a blade of grass. 

[JohnAndSancho]

I didn't feel like taking pics or doing a video. Kinda feel like... Well I probably shouldn't say here. Anyway, for the overwintering I bought a couple cheap Wal Mart shop lights that came highly recommended from the interwebs ( I think it was @SeanK who was looking, anyway they're the $17 Tough Something, they're rated higher than the brighter ones believe it or not) and I need to get some chains to hang them. There's an 8 foot bench so I'm gonna have a wall of nanners in buckets up there with 2 more in chairs on the outside with pendant lamps over them. I guess it'd make sense to put the most cold hardy on the outside, move my 10x20 heat mats out there, and rotate them. There's a propane heater in the wall, box fans set up, gonna hang a tarp with an old curtain rod so I'm not heating the whole room, these papayas are gonna make me buy 1g pots in bulk and according to my math I should need enough coir and perlite to mix 120 gallons of soil. Gonna bring another 4 foot bench off the porch for overwintering, add buckets of water for humidity, trays of water, going all out. I'm still cleaning up my uncle's trash and toys and probably will be for weeks. Lmk if anybody wants a mountain of yarn and Sears catalogs from the year 2000, I got them in spades. 

 

Anyway, in a perfect world I'd start giving away papayas to those who want them but we're about to enter that time of year where it's too cold to ship anything tender like that so they're just gonna have to grow bigger or die. I guess at one point there was a massive fire ant colony back here because I swept up an honest to jeebus gallon of sand from along the walls. 

 

Good vibes that the eBay sales move, because I'd really like to buy that 5 pack of loquat seedlings and I'd really like to get a Siam Ruby or another Ensete banana. Yes, it's PalmTalk. Yes I've been here for 5 years. Yes I'm going nanners for nanners. Can't help it.

Anyway, it's still Go Cubs and I'm out here growing stuff I have no business growing here. I called to get a quote on mulch since Chipdrop and getwoodchips have led to nothing, the power company just leaves the branches and logs behind now, and the logging companies burn everything. The guy asked me what I was growing out here, and I'm like uh palms, bananas, and papayas. He just paused. And I'm like, yes. I said palms, bananas, and papayas. $38/yard plus $150 delivery is brutal for the cheapest stuff he has. But it is what it is. 

 

Anyway, carry on. It's been too quiet on here for a while. 

[JohnAndSancho]

On 10/7/2025 at 5:59 AM, JohnAndSancho said:

Funny you mentioned it. It literally just got a new home. I initially overpotted it, this was the one with practically no roots. It wasn't completely  rootbound, but I was gonna need to do this in a week anyway. Might as well while I'm up. 

I guess I need to be more on top of these updates. Not even a week later, this banana already needs a new home. I've got a bunch of 5g buckets, a 10 lb brick of coir, and 2cu ft of perlite finally arrived. I'm ashamed to admit I talked to an AI bot and it decided that between all of the bananas, assuming I keep 20 of the Mexican papaya and 20 of the Hawaiian papaya and being prepared for palm seeds sprouting and sprouts needing up-potting (which is likely coming), 10+ bananas, I should take the money I've got from eBay sales and buy enough coir and perlite to mix 165 gallons (!!!!) worth of soil and bulk 1g pots. I mean tbf let's realize the bananas in buckets alone are 50+ gallons and the papayas grow like insanely fast and culling the herd of the Mexican papaya and keeping all of the Hawaiian papaya is gonna require tons of pots and likely more 5g buckets if I keep temps and humidity up in this room all winter, so that actually doesn't sound unreasonable... But coming from a small time grower who used to get a 2 cu ft bag of soil to last months... 165 gallons is insane. 

[JohnAndSancho]

More videos 

 

 

[JohnAndSancho]

Bought some more lights. Bought some buckets. Mixed a crap ton of soil. Getting more seed. About to buy a couple more lights. About to buy more stuff to mix more soil. About to buy a crap ton of 1 gallon pots. I had no idea anybody would pay so much on eBay for some ancient conditioner that allegedly made women go bald, but somebody did. Sold some Hot Wheels and need to sell more. Have tons of more old skincare and haircare crap from Mom's stash from before the company got bought and changed the formulas so hopefully I sell more of it. Bought some plywood to reinforce this ancient folding table so it won't collapse under the weight. Bought some plastic sheeting so the wood won't rot when I water. Concrete floor, but I'm going to line the baseboards with kitty litter for runoff. I got plans. Your one stop trop shop for organic plants in.... Rural Mississippi? Yeah son. 

[Hu Palmeras]

Good news, my friend. Lights should never be missing. They're the main aid in growing. They save energy and everything.

[JohnAndSancho]

13 minutes ago, Hu Palmeras said:

Good news, my friend. Lights should never be missing. They're the main aid in growing. They save energy and everything.

I'm acquiring a collection 😂 light and water makes green. 

[JohnAndSancho]

$155.61 got me a 10lb block of coir, 4 cu ft of perlite, 100 1 gallon pots, 2 more lights, 4 buckets and 5 loquat seedlings. 

[JohnAndSancho]

 

[JohnAndSancho]

 

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