{"id":699707,"date":"2026-07-19T09:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699707\/"},"modified":"2026-07-19T09:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-19T09:06:10","slug":"bananas-sprout-in-rayleigh-garden-after-15-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/699707\/","title":{"rendered":"Bananas sprout in Rayleigh garden after 15 years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Musa Basjoo banana has always been famous for being able to survive UK winters, but the flower often needs protection from frost.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Stavs have built walls around their plants to trap heat and create a &#8220;microclimate effect&#8221; for the colder winter weather.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Peter said: &#8220;Over the past couple of winters I haven&#8217;t wrapped them up because they&#8217;re nearly 3m (10ft) tall so it&#8217;s very difficult to wrap them. This year due to the heatwave, the plant&#8217;s actually fruited.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;You put one in the ground and you get another 10 come up. They split. They produce more and more and more.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elsewhere in the East of England, a 76-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cp8r86k3np0o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">man from Suffolk was in &#8220;complete surprise&#8221;<\/a> when his banana plant suddenly produced fruit for the first time.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Stephen Hind, of Pettistree near Wickham Market, bought the tree for his exotic garden a few years ago because &#8220;they just look good&#8221;, and believes scorching temperatures played a part in bringing it to life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Musa Basjoo banana has always been famous for being able to survive UK winters, but the flower&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":699708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-699707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=699707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/699708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=699707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=699707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=699707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}