Gone Bananas...

Gone Bananas...

Last week I harvested a stalk of bananas from one of my plants because I saw bite marks in a few of the fruit....the stalk was growing over a fence line, so I'm guessing that the squirrels discovered the stalk and decided to try them out.  The bananas had been developing for several months and were getting close to harvestable, so I thought I would rescue them from the squirrels.  After cutting the stalk, I left it out on one of my screened porches for a few days to allow time for any bugs to vacate the fruit.  (All kinds of little buggers crawl around on bananas!)  This afternoon, I brought the stalk inside for cleaning, cutting, and counting.

The four bananas with squirrel bites in them will be cut up and fed to the chickens this evening when I go out to gather the day's eggs.  The other 68 bananas are now cut into "hands", each containing anywhere from 6 to 12 bananas.  I washed them twice in cool water to make sure they are clean and bug-free, then I weighed each hand and totaled them---ten pounds and 4.8 ounces of bananas!  Realize these are small bananas, averaging only about 5 inches in length.  None of my banana plants give me huge fruit and this stalk actually has larger fruit than I normally get so I'm not complaining.  There's another stalk growing out back with really, really small bananas on it....they look almost silly.  Not sure why they're so small, given that they're growing on a very tall plant.  Oh well, they'll eat.

Things I've learned about bananas....they grow on PLANTS, not trees.  The plant dies after you harvest the fruit.  I did have one banana plant once that grew TWO stalks of fruit simultaneously.  We had to brace the plant up with 2x4s so that the fruit didn't cause the plant to fall over.  

Bananas reproduce by growing "pups".  These are small plants that grow out of the same root as the parent plant.  The root of a banana plant is called a corm and it is a large white bulbous shaped thing. Pups need to be separated from the parent plant and moved about 10' from the nearest banana plant to allow for maximum growth and productivity.  When splitting off a pup, you need to take part of the corm of the parent, too, by using a pointed shovel and stomping it straight down into the ground between the two plants.  It takes a good stomping, which requires wearing boots, NOT flip flops!

Warning:  I started off with about 5 banana plants several years ago and I now have over 50 of them out back.  Keeping up with splitting off the pups is impossible after a while.  I've given away lots of banana plants and will continue to do so until all of my friends are surrounded by bananas or they've disowned me.

Here's a picture of today's bananas:

Pretty, aren't they?

Of course, it's nearly impossible to consume 68 bananas that are ripening at the same time.  That's where canning comes in.  I love to water bath can pureed bananas (with a splash of lemon juice) and then use the bananas in yogurt and smoothies.  My hope is to have enough canned bananas to keep me from having to buy any while waiting for the next stalk to ripen.  That's a challenge, given my daily smoothie habit and the very slow development of bananas.  This stalk I just harvested had been on the plant for at least 4 months, maybe 5!  Patience and persistence.  That's my motto...