I am currently writing a paper for school on bananas and this post was really helpful! Thanks so much for the great content and the time laps video! Skip to content. Table of Contents. What is an Apple Banana? How Do Bananas Grow? When to Harvest Bananas? For more on banana ripening, you can see the previous posts: Stop Ripening Wrong: Climacteric vs. Large Scale Banana Production With the fruit and farm examples pictured above, they are apple bananas grown on a small-scale level.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it! How Do Pineapples Grow? Brad 27 Sep Reply. That was cool! I had no idea so much work went into growing bananas. Nicholas Larsen 15 Oct Reply.
Hannah 16 Jan Reply. Could not see the second video. 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.
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. 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. 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. Banana plants grow up to 25 feet tall depending on the cultivar. There are cultivars that grow just 3 to 4 feet tall. Banana leaves can grow up to 2 feet wide and 9 feet long depending on the cultivar. There are more than 1, banana cultivars.
Here are several varieties that can grow in home gardens:. Banana: Kitchen Basics. How to Grow Guava. How to Grow Mango. How to Grow Papaya.
How to Grow Cherimoya. How to Grow Passion Fruit. How to Grow Feijoa Strawberry Guava. How to Grow Citrus. How to Grow Loquats. Your email address will not be published. Post Comment. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.
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