How does potassium get inside a bananna?

General Questions
#1

I know this is kind of a dumb question but I’ve always wondered this (not just about banannas but all fruit/veggie goodness, but banannas are a good example)

So, potassium is a basic element right? So if you plant a bananna seed in some dirt that doesn’t have any potassium traces in it where does the potassium in the bananna come from? Does it generate it somehow? I would guess that it comes from the bananna breaking down some specific molecule that has a potassium component since you can’t just “make” an element out of nothing.

So, if you plant a bananna in some potassium free dirt will it grow? If so where does the potassium come from?

#2

Bananas get the potassium from the soil as minerals weather. No potassium, no bananas.

#3

Potassium is important to plants. Potassium is the last number in fertilizer.

#4

Soil generally has small amounts of, well, most elements that plants need to grow. Not always, though, especially if the same crop is grown repeatedly without fertiliser being added.

As for where the potassium comes from naturally, it’s generally the weathering of rocks that slowly releases it into an available form. See here.

#5

Nothing will grow in dirt that doesn’t have any potassium traces.

#6

That’s correct. Fertilizers are rated with an N-P-K number which shows the percent of each nutrient. N is nitogen, P is phosphorus, and K is potassium.

The K is from Kalium, the latin word for potassium.

#7

Bananas are not produced from their seeds.

#8

At least not the ones you buy in the supermarket, which are sterile triploid hybrids with only tiny undeveloped seeds. Wild bananas usually have great big seeds in them (see picture in link). Banana cultivation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Cultivation

#9

some banana plants do have seeds. the cultivar we eat don’t.