We bought two banana plants; both were supposed to be dwarf but one ended up being the larger type of plant, and it gave us some fruit. We don't know how or when to harvest it. The fruit had been on the plant for three months by late November, but was still green so we just left it.

Can you help? We really want to try eating our homegrown bananas but are afraid of not doing the right thing at the right time.

The real dwarf plant did not give us fruit, but that was OK with us. The foliage is what we were looking for, and we are definitely not disappointed at all, even with the 15-foot-tall plant's foliage.

– Peggy Sue and John Foley, Sacramento

According to UC Master Gardener Amelia Murray, it takes three to six months after flowering to harvest a mature green banana. Different types of bananas mature at different times, and bananas stop growing at about 57 degrees F.

When the little flowers at the end of the clump of bananas are dry and easy to rub off, and the banana ridges start to round, it is time to harvest the bananas.

Harvest the hard green, round and plump bananas that sometimes have a slight yellowish hint.

Try to cut the banana stem about 10 inches above the cluster. The green bananas ripen well by placing them in a brown paper bag with another ethylene gas-producing fruit such as an apple.

Put the bag in a cabinet. Remove the bananas one or two days before fully ripe and let them ripen on their own on a counter or in a cabinet.

A new banana plant that has grown from the base of the plant will produce your next bunch of bananas as the mother plant that produced this year's bunch will die.

Your banana plant is really a perennial herb, not a tree. It grows from a corm with many growing points that turn into new cormels or suckers.

Even dwarf banana plants may produce 4-inch-long bananas in three to five years, giving you something to watch for on your true dwarf.

You may try to control the height of your banana plants by using less fertilizer. If your banana plants were in pots, you could control the height by using smaller pots.

Also, some banana plants labeled dwarf such as some of the Dwarf Cavendish banana plants still grow 10 or more feet tall. Banana plants labeled "super dwarf" usually stay shorter than 5 feet and grow well in containers.

Fruiting varieties are best adapted to zones 21-24 in California. In zones 8, 9 and 14, frost usually kills the tops of the plants each year, but the roots resprout. Harvest season is usually late summer into fall, or whenever the fruit at the top of the cluster starts to turn yellow. Cut the whole cluster and let it ripen at room temperature.

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