How good are homegrown bananas! Do you know the best way to harvest them? Many people harvest the whole bunch but that means they all ripen at the same time and you have sooooo many bananas to eat within a week. So I have learnt the best way to harvest is to cut off a “hand” at a time, bring them inside and put them in a bag to ripen. The rest stay green on the plant and ripen slower. These are sugar bananas and have a much sweeter taste than the supermarket Cavendish variety. They’re only just a bit longer than my fingers, short and stumpy (the banana not my fingers haha).
7 things you need to know about growing your own bananas
1. Banana plants grow from suckers shooting off the base of the mother plant. It can take anywhere from 18 months to 3 years to see this sucker produce any fruit. Be patient!!
2. They need lots of room to grow, allow 2 to 4 square metres per plant.
3. Banana plants like rich moist soil, so fertilise regularly with compost or make a compost pit nearby.
4. The mother plant will only produce one bunch of fruit, so cut this back to ground level once you’ve harvested the bunch.
5. Plants will produce more suckers than you need and careful pruning is needed to ensure fruit develops. Keep each group to a family of three – one mother plant that has a bunch ripening, one baby sucker and one somewhere in between (the teenager). Cut back everything else. This way your plant will put the energy into developing fruit instead of growing suckers. And you’ll have a succession plan for future bunches.
6. The banana inflorescence is called a “bell” and has many flowers that turn into the bunch of bananas that we eat. They start pointing down but turn and point upwards as they mature. That’s when you should cover the bunch with a banana ripening bag, blue on the shady side, silver on the sunny side of the bunch to reflect the sun and encourage even ripening on both sides.
7. The bell can be cut off once the bunch has developed so that energy is redirected into the fruit rather than the infertile flowers still in the bell. (My chickens love these little flowers too). You can peel back the layers of the bell and eat the core.
Cleaning your garden tools
Here’s one more tip you need to know. When you harvest home grown bananas, the sugary sap is quite sticky and hard to get off. It doesn’t seem to matter how much soap I use, my hands still feel sticky. I heard a tip on ABC Gardening Australia years ago that milk is helpful when harvesting bananas. And it works!!!
I wash my hands AND my tools with milk and it gets all that sticky stuff off. Job done!!
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How many banana plants can be grown on a standard residential block ? (900sq.m.), and what nursery grown varieties are allowed ?
Thanks
David
I would check with your local nursery and find out what they recommend for your area. Not sure where you are located so I can’t really advise.
A typical backyard with plenty of space can grow a few bananas, but it will all depend on what else you have around. They take up a lot of space and need regular pruning to cut out the suckers to prevent it going too rampant.
Is it not necessary to place bags over growing bananas on the tree
I’m worried the racoons and squirrels will get my bananas before I harvest. Can I protect the bunch with a bag?
Yes definitely. I cover mine with banana bags to protect against bats too
Bagging is done by commercial growers to protect fruit from pests and also to help ripen them evenly.
Hi, great advice here,I have six trees with bunches on them and I’ve bagged them,my question is do the bananas ripen on the tree?
Or do they need to be ripened indoors?
Thanks!
They can ripen on the tree although I bring in a “hand” at a time from the top of the bunch and ripen them indoors. These will ripen before the rest of the bunch so you don’t have an overload with them all ripening at once.
I have a large bunch of bananas on the tree but after 6 months it is still not ripening?
They can ripen on the tree although I bring in a “hand” at a time from the top of the bunch and ripen them indoors. These will ripen before the rest of the bunch so you don’t have an overload with them all ripening at once.
Hi! Very good tip on harvesting one “hand” at a time. May I know if you have a particular order? E.g., do you cut the topmost “hand” and work downwards? I have a tree fruiting right now. Thank you.
Yes it’s the topmost hand that is harvested first.
Over recent years my banana trees have been growing shorter and produce less and less fruit. I have kept up the fertiliser but I am now thinking the whole regenerating organism has a limited lifespan. I read somewhere 25-30 years, but information on this is not easy to find . Should I clear the area, dig it over and plant something new?