My journey of raising banana plants from these seeds over the past 12 months has been incredible and full of surprises. It's so magical that you can grow such lush healthy plants from such dry, dormant looking seeds, so let's rewind and share the entire journey together. When I took delivery of the banana seeds I was a little disappointed. They looked so dry and small and shriveled and I just couldn't believe that I was going to be able to grow a lush healthy banana plant from something that looked like this. After a few hours of research I realized I had to soak the banana seeds in warm water. This would soften that hard outer seed coat and allow water to enter through the small opening in that hard outer seed shell. As I was sowing these in late winter the radiators were still on in my house so I placed this recycled takeaway container on top of the radiators to keep that water warm for the period of three days. Now it was a waiting game with my fingers crossed hoping that everything would go to plan. My research also suggested scarifying the seeds. That's sanding away some of that hard outer seed coat to help water enter the seeds. I was a little unsure so I only tried this on a couple of seeds and left the majority soaking on the radiator for the next few days. Three days has now passed and the seeds look ready for sowing. They have definitely swollen slightly and on close inspection that hard outer seed coat is definitely beginning to soften. This is progress. The seeds are now ready for sowing and I've decided to sew them into a large deep seed pot with multiple seeds in one pot. Now I'm going to use multi-purpose compost and I think that will be absolutely fine. Now for sowing the seeds I decided to push them into the soil at a depth of about one to two centimeters to give them plenty of moisture surrounding the seeds and then I top-dressed the pot with vermiculite because vermiculite is fantastic at retaining moisture. I think banana seeds are going to really benefit from lots of moisture to help those seeds continue to soften and uptake water to trigger germination. Now to prevent my seeds drying out I've covered the top of the pot with a clear perspex sheet and that's going to prevent any evaporation. Next I need to create a hot cold day night temperature cycle so I put my seeds right at the edge of my propagator so that they'd feel those cold nighttime temperatures and three months later I saw germination. Yes you heard me this took three months. Although germinations took considerably longer than I thought the rate of growth from germination onwards was surprisingly fast so I needed to pot these young banana plants on into their individual pots. Now just like with most plants I wait until they produce their first true leaf and then delicately prick them out teasing the roots apart taking care not to pull on the stem because you don't want to damage any of those soft young plant cells. The process of pricking out young banana plants proved especially difficult because they developed so many roots at this young age and in the back of my mind I'm thinking it may have been better if I'd sewn these banana seeds individually into their own pots or seed cells. Now with tropical plants like this the rate of growth is surprising and they're going to be hungry plants so I decided to enrich the multi-purpose potting compost with some chicken manure pellets. Now chicken manure pellets are high in nitrogen and nitrogen is exactly what large leafed plants thrive on. It's going to help the plants grow strong and healthy and if these young banana plants continue to grow at this rate then I'm sure they're going to need potting on in two to four weeks at which point I can add more food and more compost to encourage healthy plants. Six months later and I've posited on my banana plants one more time and they are thanking me for it. Look how beautiful this plant is grown from seed that's same spring and one of the best things about mousa succumentsis is that young plants have this deep red underside and maroon streaks on the upper surface of the leaf it is really stunning. Twelve months later I decided to plant the young seed grown banana plant outdoors into my UK tropical style garden and it is thriving and I can sit there happily knowing the journey that I've been on growing this banana from seed. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and if you did please hit subscribe it's the easiest way to support this channel and don't forget to create a free account on our growers forum at growparadise.social. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you all in the next one.