Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Expect the Queenslanders to be having a lot of input here.

Caught the Sunrise show on Channel 7 yesterday and caught a section where the little guy, that used to do the weather and is connected to the V8 Supercars, was up in Carnarvon talking about bananas. Specifically the smaller ones that they used to throw out until some clever marketing guy got some of the growers together and sold them as Lunchbox Bananas as they fit in a kids luinchbox. Now they sell them all.

Anyway, it got me motivated to post a piccy of my fairly average effort at growing a banana tree. It has never seemed overly happy where it is, but I don't really have a better spot for it, so I persevere hoping it wil hit some sort of critical mass in the future and then take off.

That new leaf will soon be shredded, like the others, by the bloody nightimte easterlies.

Just realised what a crap photo this is - will get another soon, showing the new shoot that is coming up as well.

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Protected location is pretty important for bananas. A friend of mine had a house in Palmyra where there was a very large banana patch down one fence. He got quite a few bananas each year even though they were only small. I have a couple of plants but they aren't in the best position and have never produced much. I'm about to plant out some more in the next couple of weeks.

Shameless plug.......

I've been working on the next edition of the BF mag and guess what's going to be in it???
A long way from finished yet though, I only put that article together a couple of days ago, might need some more pictures yet.

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Bringing Food Production Home

That would be Grant Denyer you're talking about, and a lot of females would like to give him a mmmm, anyway we are talking banana's here!
I have 2 banana plants growing quite well here, but they often get frosted in the winter. Have managed to get some fruit off them a couple of times and it was the nicest banana I've ever tasted, more like fruit salad

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Tristrin
our aquaponics http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... =18&t=6875
backyard viewtopic.php?f=24&t=107

Whoops - sorry EB, didn't know.


Yeah, the shed is directly to the east so it breaks it up a bit. Hoping that once there's a few stems growing it will protect itself to a degree.

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Nice plant Tristrin - very nice indeed. Looks like it's in the perfect spot.

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CD, I'm really interested in trying to grow a banana. How old is yours, what aspect and shelter do you have and how much water does it need? I hear they are voracious feeders. The spot I have in mind for mine is sheltered from south and west to six feet and could be sheltered from the east if I grow something on a netting fence, at least in the summer. I understood that the shredding of the leaves is not harmful to the tree.

Lotsa questions. Hope you can enlighten me.

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Granny Smith

I actually knock down alot of leave off the tree. And feed them to my goats. As living in NQLD i really don't have a problem to grow bananas. The need warmth and moistrue. they slowly grow here in winter. but summer they grow that qucikly they fall over and break. I would say somewhere off reflected heat for all you southerns and water, protection from frost. they love water, and mulch.

Frost is definitly the main problem for us southeners, but ours have been through a minus 6 Deg which burnt off all the leaves, but they re-shot in the Spring & then grow rapidly over Summer.
Best position is some protection from the cold south/west wind, and they do like to be well watered.

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Tristrin
our aquaponics http://www.backyardaquaponics.com/forum ... =18&t=6875
backyard viewtopic.php?f=24&t=107

We've got babanas fruiting in Jandakot. They burn off in the frost anywhere between July and October, but grow quickly in Summer with regular watering. I do love a challenge.

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Her in Queensland you are meant to have a permit to grow bananas. It is free and easy to get, so being a good boy about 5 1/2 years back I got one that lets me grow 10 trees. You are required to buy certified plants, can't just go and get a sucker off a mate. That suited me fine because I wanted to know what I had and that it would be quality. At the time there were no certified plants available so I had to buy little plantlets in agar that had been cloned by one of the DPI mobs. I bought about 6 different types of plant from memory, including some cooking varieties. It is a real pain to grow them out to planting stage from the plantlets, but I was going along merrily until one day I had an accident and cooked all the plants by 2. The two left were dwarf duccasi (sp?) and lady finger. Got a couple of good crops off the plants before I started neglecting them, so since then have had little (though just last week cut off a not too bad crop of dwarf duccasi which managed to come along without any help due to all the good rains over Xmas etc I suspect. Come the right time, I will make a couple of banana circles and grow fromt he pleniful suckers I get from my original plants.

BTW - the Dwarf Duccasi, while small are a beautiful tasting fruit IMHO. A meatier texture than a normal cavendish and heaps sweet also.

Wow, you're pretty tight with restrictions there hey VB? I just assumed that everybody in QLD grew stacks of bananas, as though they would grow like weeds on the side of the road..

But then I guess Bananas and probably sugarcane as well would have some pretty tight controls to keep the industry safe.

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I think I'm probably the only one who has ever obeyed the rules - but hey, I reckon it's good regulation given that all they are trying to do is protect the industry and they make ti free to get the permit.

Sounds a bit like the silver perch permit here.... I'm legal...

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There is a scheme here for self assessed aquaculture permits. Have never needed one, so haven't bothered - but I think it is good.

GS - here be me details;

The location is semi-shaded by an enormous white gum until about 2 pm, then it's pretty much full sun untill sunset - 8-8:45pm in the summer. It gets watered about 4-5 days out of 7, so is probably not getting as much as it would like however, it has stil sent up another shoot so I assume it is not too unhappy.

The soil is a mixture of laterite (pea gravel), weathered granite, and clay into which I have dug a good amount of potting mix and sheep poo.

It is a little sheltered by the shed from the easterlies we get, but not a great deal. I'm hoping that ones it has a number of large stems up it will shelter itself t a degree as well. The easterlies are byt far the strongest wind we get here.

Yeah, I don't believe that the shredding damages the plant either, but it looks like crap and it means I can't use those leaves for cooking with either.

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My Websites: http://www.chillies-down-under.com
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