Winter and other things happened, and the bananas went into the greenhouse (45F at night) rather than the warm grow areas. They're mostly in stasis there--I'll try to find time and space to pull them out see if there's something that looks worth warming up.
Judith at Fancy Fronds in Gold Bar is one of my favorite fern experts. Her collection is amazing and she produces both tropical and temperate ferns in her cold climate. I haven't spoken with her in fifteen years or so, but at that time she did her propagation on sterile organic media flats open to the greenhouse. My first visit to her operation was very inspirational.
I don't recall who encouraged me to experiment with bananas, but there are lots of resources on the web. I used to propagate and sell exotic plants on eBay, before 9/11 made shipping far more unreliable and expensive. It only took a couple months of smashed, opened, and greatly delayed packages to drive me out of business.
Back when I played with tissue culture I did it in a homemade glove box with a spray bottle of alcohol inside to constantly re-sterilize things. This was before digital cameras, and I never thought to take film pictures of anything I was doing. Agar, petri dishes, and basic nutrients are cheap, so it was an inexpensive hobby, if time-consuming. It was the drive for new orchids that got expensive.
I will say that with good technique and attention you can reliably produce hundreds of verifiably disease-free banana plants from a bit of corm using tissue culture. The best I ever did with a large banana corm on regular media was 30 or so offspring, and it took far longer (calendar time) though it was a lot less effort.
