Virgil Evetts
Considering their popularity as a store-bought fruit, it’s surprising that bananas aren’t more common as a backyard food crop. They grow faster than pretty much any fruit tree (bananas are actually giant herbs, not trees), and if properly maintained produce massive crops year after year. Although not as hardy as apples or even feijoa, bananas can be grown in many parts of the country. Roughly speaking, if you can grow limes, you can probably grow bananas too.
Most of the bananas available to the home gardener in New Zealand are of the lady finger type. These produce weighty bunches of stubby, sweet and richly flavoured fruit. Lady fingers can be white, yellow or orange fleshed, but all taste considerably better (somehow more banana-like) than their imported, store-bought counterparts.
Being an avid urban forager, I nose about in other peoples gardens at every opportunity. I actually see a lot of banana plants around Auckland, but very few that have been properly managed, and thus very few that bear much in the way of fruit. Although bananas are very easy to grow, there is one very important and rather counterintuitive secret to their success: you don’t cut down the fruit, you cut down the whole ‘tree’.
What looks like a tree is actually merely a stem, and it can only fruit once. If allowed to linger, it will suck energy from the underground rhizome and cause crowding as more shoots reach for the sky. Within a year or so the plant will become a tangled, tatty mess, producing only the occasional small flower spike, most of which will shrivel or form hard, perma-green fruitlets. If you’re in possession of such a thicket, get out there now and start slashing. Leave only two to three young shoots. Sounds brutal I know, but come next autumn you’ll thank me. Almost forgot- banana sap stains like blood, so throw on something old and scruffy before the carnage begins.
Anyway, I raised this topic with an ulterior motive. You see well-managed bananas really are astonishingly productive, and therein lies the problem. This week I harvested my first bananas of the season: a single bunch weighing around 20 kilos, which in typically irksome banana fashion, is ripening en mass. More dauntingly still, a second (even larger) bunch is only about a week away, so I’m racing against the clock. I’ve been using them in curries, in cakes, fried and will try drying some this weekend too. But I’m running short on inspiration. They’re a wonderful fruit and I don’t want any to end up as chicken feed. So I’m keen, nay desperate, for some knockout suggestions. Help me. Please.
I have made the frozen banana icecream and its like a soft freeze if you add just a little milk and some vanilla. My kids love it, and I’m quite partial to it myself.
I’d be freezing your leftovers Virgil. I used to chop my bananas up, place in a plastic chinese container with a lid and freeze. Great for smoothies too instead of adding water ice cubes add banana ice cubes.
Wish I could grow bananas here as we spend a fortune on them every week.
Imrose, you can buy them from most Garden Centres or for a decent range try either http://www.subtropica.co.nz/html/index.htm or http://www.subtropical.co.nz/
I grow a Samoan variety called Misi Luki. Very easy to grow. Basically just plant in a sunny, sheltered spot and leave them to grow. They like a good dose of nitrogen-rich fertizler now and then.
Hey interesting read.I too want top grow them.We are regular eaters and always thought we could not grow then in NZ..Could u help me in any way.Where can i buy them???How to plant and care for them.
Awaiting for ur reply.
Imrose
Lynette I’m quite sure you could grow bananas on your balcony, and in Thailand they would fruit very happily. I’d recommend a dwarf variety though. My plants reach about 4 metres, which would be pretty tall for a roof garden.
I used a glut of bananas to make banana ketchup – its sort of like BBQ Sauce.
Do you think bananas would grow on a balcony – I have a large balcony with a lawned area and a garden around the edge where the soil is about 12 inches deep. Sort of like a roof top garden (we are on the top floor of the apartment block). A banana tree would look great and if it fruited, even better!
Put them in the freezer in their skins and use when they are not so plentiful. Great for banana cakes.
I’ve never tried it myself, but there’s always frozen-banana ice cream (just bananas frozen then blended). It’s supposed to make a creamy, rich ice cream.