How to plant banana

Growing bananas does not take much effort, but it does

require that you get a few things right when you first

get started...

Banana plants can offer many benefits:

They make great windbreaks or screens,

they can keep the sun of the hot western side of

your house,

they utilize the water and nutrients in waste drains

(think washing water or outdoor shower),

the leaves can be fed to horses, cows and other

grazers,

the dried remains of the trunks can be used for

weaving baskets and mats.

Oh, and they give you bananas. Lots of bananas!

25 kg of bananas in the making.

But when I look around friends' gardens then I see some

pretty sad looking banana plants growing there. It helps

to understand what bananas like and dislike if you

want them to be happy!

Banana plants like:

Rich, dark, fertile soils.

Lots of mulch and organic matter. LOTS . Just keep

piling it on.

Lot of nitrogen and potassium. (Chicken manure!)

Steady warmth, not too hot and not too cold.

(Bananas are sissies when it comes to

temperatures...)

Steady moisture, in the ground and in the air.

The shelter of other bananas! That's the most

overlooked aspect by home growers...

Banana plants dislike:

Strong winds.

Extreme heat or cold.

Being hungry or thirsty.

Being alone and exposed.

More detail on all that below.

Banana Varieties

Cavendish is the variety that you know from the

supermarket. If you live near a banana growing region,

this is the variety you see in the plantations. It is a stout

plant that produces large heavy bunches.

Lady Fingers are very tall and slender plants and have

smaller, sweeter fruit. They are often grown by

gardeners as ornamental plants with the small fruit

being a bonus.

Plantains are cooking bananas. They are drier and

more starchy. You use them green like you would use

potatoes, and they taste similar.

80% of all bananas grown in the world are plantain

varieties! They are an important staple food in many

tropical countries.

There are many other exotic varieties, but those above

are the most popular and most commonly grown.

What I describe below and most of the pictures on this

page refer to Cavendish bananas but the advice applies

to all other varieties as well.

How Do Bananas Grow?

Bananas are not real trees, not even palm trees, even

though they are often called banana palms. Bananas

are perennial herbs.

( Gingers, heliconias and bird-of-paradise flowers are

distant relatives of bananas. They are in the same

order, Zingiberales .)

Banana trunks consists of all the leaf stalks wrapped

around each other. New leaves start growing inside,

below the ground. They push up through the middle and

emerge from the centre of the crown. So does the

flower, which finally turns into a bunch of bananas.

Here is a picture series showing how the flower looks

at first, and how the bananas appear and curl up

towards the light.

Those pictures were taken over the course of a few

days. You can pretty much watch this happen. But now

it will take another two months or so, depending on the

temperature, for the fruit to fill out and finally ripen.

A banana plant takes about 9 months to grow up and

produce a bunch of bananas. Then the mother plant

dies. But around the base of it are many suckers or

pups, little baby plants.

At the base of a banana plant, under the ground, is a

big rhizome called the corm.

The rhizome has many growing points and those turn

into new suckers/pups. The suckers can be taken off

and transplanted, and one or two can be left in position

to replace the mother plant.

Great, so now you know what to do once you have

bananas growing in your garden, but how do you start?

How To Get Started Growing Bananas

First you need to make sure that you can in fact grow

bananas where you are.

You need a tropical or warm subtropical

climate. Bananas can handle extreme heat (if they have

enough water), but they don't like it. They can handle

cool weather for a short while, but they don't like that

either. Below 14°C (57°F) they just stop growing.

If the temperatures drop any lower the fruit suffers, the

skin turns greyish and the leaves can turn yellow. Frost

kills the plant above ground, but the corm can survive

and may re-shoot.

The ideal temperature range for banana growing is

around 26-30°C (78-86°F).

You need a lot of water to grow bananas. The huge

soft leaves evaporate a lot and you have to keep up the

supply. Bananas also need high humidity to be happy.

Where I live the commercial banana growers water

their plants two or three times a day with sprinklers to

keep up the humidity in the banana plantation!

You need very rich soil. If you don't have good soil to

start with, make some. Incorporate lots and lots of

compost and plenty of chicken manure before you plant

your bananas. Wood ash for extra potassium doesn't

hurt either. Then mulch them very thickly. And keep

mulching and feeding them!

And you need room so you can plant enough of them

together. Bananas need shelter from wind. Growing

many banana plants together increases the humidity in

the middle, evens out temperature changes a bit, and it

shades and cools the trunks. You don't want to cook the

flower that's forming in the middle...

If you get a chance, look at a commercial banana

plantation somewhere. The outside rows, especially the

western side, always look sad. The best bananas grow

on the inside.

You should plant bananas in blocks or clumps, not

single rows and definitely not single plants. If you have

very little room you can grow a few banana plants

together and grow something else on the outside to

protect them. But you do need to give them that

sheltered jungle environment if you want them to be

happy.

(Now, please don't send me any more emails letting me

know that you are successfully growing a solitary

banana plant in a tub on your patio or in your

greenhouse or wherever. This is a permaculture site.

We are not talking about keeping plants alive outside

their natural growing conditions. We are growing food.

Having said that, understanding what makes a banana

plant happy will help you grow it just for fun and

under sub-optimal conditions as well.)

Planting Bananas

You can not grow the usual bananas from seeds. These

banana plants don't produce viable seeds like wild

bananas do.

The best way is to start with the above mentioned

suckers or pups. Know someone who grows bananas?

Talk to them. Every banana plant produces a lot more

suckers than you need, so people usually have plenty to

give away.

Only take suckers from vigorous banana plants. The

suckers should have small, spear shaped leaves and

ideally be about four feet high. Smaller suckers will

take longer to fruit and the first banana bunch will be

smaller.

Cut the sucker from the main banana plant with a sharp

shovel. Cut downwards between the mature plant and

the sucker. You have to cut through the corm. It's not

easy.

Make sure you get a good chunk of corm and many

roots with it. Chop the top off the sucker to reduce

evaporation while you move it and while it settles into

its new home.

Remember, the growing point is at the bottom of a

banana plant. You can decapitate the sucker. It will

grow back.

Another option is to dig up a bit of the rhizome and

chop it into bits. Every bit that has an eye can be

planted and will grow into a banana plant. But it takes

longer than growing banana suckers.

Plant your bits or suckers in your well prepared

banana patch, keeping two to five metres between them.

The spacing depends on your layout. My bananas grow

in a block of several double rows. Within the double

rows the spacing is two to three metres, now with two

plants in each position, suckers of the initial plant. My

double rows are four to five metres apart.

I also have a banana circle around an outdoor shower

with two metres at the most between individual plants,

and they are growing in a haphazard way.

If you have just a single clump of a few banana plants

you can put them even closer together.

Keep your banana plants moist but not too wet in the

early days or they may rot. They don't have leaves yet

to evaporate water, so they don't need a lot of it.

Maintaining Your Banana Patch

The most common cause of death for bananas is lack

of water.

The most common cause for not getting fruit is

starvation.

Banana plants blow over in strong winds.

Protect them and feed them and water them and all

will be well. Other than that bananas don't need much

maintenance.

Just remove any dead leaves and cut down the dead

plants every now and then.

You get bigger fruit if you remove all unwanted

suckers, only keeping the best one.

After the initial planting you can leave two on healthy,

vigorous plants. Beyond that it is better to keep one

sucker per plant on average. Otherwise your patch will

become too crowded.

The best suckers are the ones with the small, spear

shaped leaves, NOT the pretty ones with the big round

leaves!

Why? A sucker that is still fed by the mother plant

does not need to do much photosynthesis, so it doesn't

need to produce big leaves.

And a sucker that is well looked after by the mother

plant will produce better fruit and be stronger than one

that had to struggle on its own.

A mature plantation is pretty much self mulching. Just

throw all the leaves and old trunks etc. back under the

plants. You can also grow other plants in the

understory to produce more mulch. (I use cassava,

sweet potato and crotolaria).

You just need to sprinkle on some fertiliser every now

and then, to replace what you took out of the system

when you took the bananas. Bananas are high in

potassium, so ideally the fertiliser should be, too. Keep

the fertiliser close to the trunk as bananas don't have

big root systems.

Growing Banana Fruit

You may see your first flower emerge after about six

months , depending on the weather. Leave the leaves

around it, especially the one protecting the top bend of

the stalk from sunburn!

As the purple flower petals curl back and drop off

they reveal a "hand" of bananas under each. Each

banana is a "finger".

You may get anything between four to a dozen or more

full hands. Then, under the next petal, you'll see a hand

of teeny weeny excuses for bananas. Those are the

male fingers.

The male fingers just dry and drop off. Only the stalk

remains. If you let it grow it will eventually reach the

ground.

Some people break off the "bell" (the bunch of purple

flower petals at the end) about 15 cm below the last

female hand. That way the banana plant puts its

energy and reserves into growing big bananas, and not

into growing a long stalk. Commercial banana growers

also remove some of the bottom female hands, so the

remaining bananas grow bigger.

Not everyone thinks that way, though. This is a

comment from one of my readers:

"I never cut the flower off the bananas. The

hummers (Ed: hummingbirds) love them

too much. As you said, there are always

enough bananas around and though I sell

them I have to keep my hummers happy."

Well, and then you patiently wait for at least another

two months.

If your banana plant is not very strong or not very

straight you may have to prop your banana bunch,

because it becomes very heavy, and a bunch can snap

off or pull the whole plant over.

A good prop would be a long stick with a u-shaped

hook at the end. But a long enough plank or pole can

do the job, too. I leave that to your ingenuity.

Bananas are ready to be picked when they look well

rounded with ribs, and the little flowers at the end are

dry and rub off easily. You can pick them now, green,

and they will start ripening as soon as you pick them,

no matter their size.

They will eventually ripen on the bunch, too, and those

bananas taste the best. But once they start they ripen

very quickly, faster than you can eat or use them. So

you may as well cut the top hands off a bit earlier and

ripen them on the kitchen bench.

You can also cut the whole bunch and hang it

somewhere if you need to protect it from possums or

birds or other thieves. But then all bananas will ripen

at once! So be prepared.

You can preserve bananas for use in cooking and

baking by peeling and freezing them. Or, to preserve

them for eating, peel, split in half lengthwise and dry

them.

Once the bunch is picked the rest of the plant will die

quickly. Cut it to the ground, throw on some chook poo,

and let the next sucker grow while you process all the

bananas.