Gardening – Cool bananas

I love the look of bananas. Their gloriously lush foliage transports me to more tropical climes where bananas flourish and the abundant fruit they produce is always welcome. In my garden, I have about a dozen different varieties of fruiting or ornamental varieties, some truly tropical and cosseted in my greenhouse, others hardy enough to grow outdoors.

The Dwarf Cavendish variety (which despite the name still grows to about 3 metres high) is the main banana of commerce and is widely considered a tropical plant. However, they will grow and fruit well in our climate too, as evidenced by a magnificent clump of Dwarf Cavendish in a corner of our property, which produces six or more large bunches every year – each bunch carrying anything up to 150 bananas. These are about half the size of those in the shops, but with much better taste. Once you’ve tasted home-grown Cavendish, the commercial ones will seem a poor imitation.

In another corner, we have a clump of the hardier Australian Lady Finger type, that bear bunches of chubby, very sweet fruit; the winter crop can be on the floury side as they don’t get enough heat and sun to change their starches into sugar. We often leave the winter bananas to the birds. Waxeyes love these energy-filled fruit.

Among my ornamental banana collection, a valued plant is Musa zebrina, known as the “blood banana” for its dramatic dark green leaves, heavily variegated with deep blood red markings. It is a true tropical, so even up here in the north it needs to be grown in a greenhouse, but the leaves are well worth the effort. Two other gorgeous ornamental bananas make excellent subtropical hedges in the garden. These are Musa velutina, which produces pretty pink flowers followed by pink bananas, and Musa ornate, which produces large magenta coloured flower bracts also followed by pink bananas. The fruit of these three varieties are barely edible, but they look great in the garden.

Bananas are gross feeders, which means plenty of organic fertiliser, mulch and potassium are the keys to producing large bunches of tasty fruit. I fertilise every spring with a liberal dressing of sheep pellets, a decent sprinkling of sulphate of potash and some handfuls of general fertiliser. Stems that have already fruited are chopped down to give more room for new suckers to develop, and these are left on the ground along with more green material from other gardening operations. It’s almost impossible to overfeed them, and sometimes the mulch layer of various plant stems, leaves and compost can get nearly a metre high before it breaks down.

Regular removal of excess suckers is essential to provide more space, nutrients and water for the remaining stems, ensuring maximum bunch size. For each fruiting stem, I aim to leave no more than one to two new stems. Aside from feeding, sucker removal and cutting off old leaves to keep the clump looking tidy, there is very little else that needs to be done. For the small amount of work they require, the vast amount of fruit they produce should make bananas a must-have for any garden in the north.