Red Tip

Hi, I just bought a house in Queensland Australia and i have several (8) Banana Plants in my garden. In total I have about 4 bunches with small green bananas on them (about 4 inches long).

Quite a few of the large green leaves on the plants are dying and turning brown.

Can anybody give me some advise on how much I should be watering the plants, whether I need any feed and when I should pick the banans etc???

All advise greatly appreciated. Apologies for being a banana novice.

Thanks
Gavin

D_&_T

You would want moist ground not wet (root rot) wouldnt hurt to use balanced fertilizer with out weed killer!

__________________

Red Tip

many thanks D & T

lorax

Also, the ones that are fruiting have pretty much reached the end of their lives as pseudotrees. Once the bunch is mature (ie it's not making any more little fingerlings and the ones that are there are swelling up nicely) I'd personally cut the flower and eat it, and cover the bunch in a clear or slightly opaque plastic bag to help the ripening process along, prevent sunburn, and keep the birds and bats off. This is what we do in Ecuador at the commercial plantations. Blue bags also work well.

Be sure to give your nanners plenty of water, and as D&T said a nice mulch won't hurt, nor will a bit of fertilizer.

Once the bunch has nice, fat looking nanners on most of the hands (the very last ones rarely develop for me), you can cut it and hang in partial shade for it to ripen. At this stage, a bag becomes almost a necessity to trap the natural ethyline the bunch produces as it ripens, since you're not going to artificially gas your nanners. It takes my bunches about two weeks to start ripening.

Here's a caution - a developed bunch of bananas is really heavy. Depending on how many hands are on the bunch and the cultivars you're growing, they can go past 150 lbs. Unless you're really burly, you probably want to ask a friend to help you.

Once you've got the bunch down, you may wish to cut down the pseudostem to make room for the older pups. Bananas die after fruiting, so if you just leave the pseudotree it will eventually be only a tall pseudostem.

And there is my long-winded answer to what was essentially a pretty simply question. Sorry 'bout that.

mskitty38583

also remember when you are wacking off the stalk to get your nanas down, wear clothes you dont care to get very nasty.the sap that comes out of the stalk will not come out of clothes, and youll have a hard time of getting it off your hands.( i learned that from on here. LOL!) congrats on your purchase of a house and you got lucky it had nanas there. wahoo! if the nanas get to heavy for the stalk to hold, it could break, so if you want to leave the nanas on the trees longer you might have to support the whole bunch! no worries! and its great to have you here!

__________________
WELCOME TO THE GATOR NATION

lorax

And you can use bamboo or 2 x 4 lumber to prop a tree.

If you do get nanner sap on your hands, gasoline will take it off. So will turpentine. Very little else will, however, short of waiting for the latex to dry and then peeling it off in gross and grizzly layers.....

magicgreen

Hi Everybody!
I don't know about you! But I try to keep the gas off my hands if possible! I guess it all depends on what kind of business your in, huh?
But then I've only been growing them since........see below
I have aLot more to learn about the banana plant species...........
And I LIKE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

__________________
(Started growing bananas July 2007)
(Zone 6)

lorax

Meh. I'm a theatre designer by trade. There are some paints that just won't come off my hands except with gasoline. Or Acetone, but it's harder to get that commercially. So I wasn't exactly afraid of washing in gas to get the nanner gunk off - it's just like getting plywood glue off. (and in fact, nanna sap used to be used for that very purpose. Still is used as a strong latex adhesive down here.)