How to grow bananas – It does not take much effort and is relatively easy to do when you get a few things right on how to grow bananas in your own garden. It is important to note that bananas grow in a tropical or warm tropical climate and needs lots of water to thrive well. You cannot grow bananas from seeds; they only grow from suckers pull out from a mother plant.
Bananas are perennial herbs with all the leaf stalks wrapped each other consisting its trunk. A banana plant takes about 9 months to grow up and produce a bunch of bananas. Before knowing how to grow bananas, you should first know which banana variety will suit your needs. Here are the most commonly used varieties:
- Cavendish –
- Lady fingers – very tall and slender plants and have sweeter fruit.
- Plantains – cooking bananas which are drier and starchier and are used green like you would use potatoes, and they taste similar.
You should also note that bananas don’t like strong winds and extremes in temperature, so choose a place where your trees will be protected from both. Also make sure that the areas where you will plant your bananas have a steady warmth and moisture both in the ground and in the air.
Growing requirements for bananas:
- Climate – this plant can handle extreme heat given that they have enough water.They can also handle cool weather for a short span of time but tend to stop growing in temperatures below 57F. Lower temperatures than this and the fruit skin turn grey and the leaves turn yellow.
- Water – Huge amount of water is needed to grow bananas since its huge soft leaves evaporate a lot. It also needs high humidity. The most common cause of death for bananas is lack of water.
- Soil – You will need a very rich soil for your bananas. Incorporate lots of compost and chicken manure before planting. Thick mulch is also needed to conserve the soil’s moisture.
- Spacing – if you plan to plant several banana trees together, make sure you have enough room. Growing many bananas together increases the humidity in the middle. You would not like to cook the flower that is growing in the middle, so even out the spacing of your trees. Plant them in blocks or clumps, not single rows.
- Pruning – Remove any dead leaves and cut down dead plants every now and then. You can get bigger fruits if you remove all unwanted suckers and keep the best ones.The best suckers are the ones with the small, spear shaped leaves.
- Harvesting – Banana fruits are ready to be harvested when they look well rounded with ribs and the little flowers at the end are dry and rub off easily. Once they start to ripen, they do so very quickly, faster than you can eat or use them. So you may as well cut the top hands off a bit earlier and ripen them on the kitchen. You can preserve bananas for use in cooking and baking by peeling and freezing them. Or, to preserve them for eating, peel, split in half lengthwise and dry them.
Banana varieties to grow
Edible bananas are seedless and grown from suckers (pups) or tissue-cultured plants, not from seed — the “banana seeds” sometimes sold are usually ornamental or wild species. Choose a variety to suit your space and climate:
- Cavendish — the standard supermarket dessert banana; Dwarf Cavendish is the best choice for pots and small gardens.
- Lady Finger (sugar banana) — smaller, very sweet fruit on tall plants.
- Plantains — starchy cooking bananas, used green like a potato.
- Red banana and Blue Java (the “ice-cream banana”, notably hardier) — specialty types.
- Ornamental / hardy bananas such as Musa basjoo — grown for their bold foliage in cool climates rather than for fruit.
Growing bananas in containers and indoors
Dwarf varieties grow well in a large pot, which lets you move the plant into a warm, bright spot — a conservatory or sunny room — over winter. Give it the brightest light you have, steady warmth and humidity, and feed and water generously in growth. Indoors in a cool climate a banana is usually grown as a dramatic foliage plant; it rarely fruits inside without a lot of heat and light. See indoor foliage plants and indoor fruit plants.
Feeding — bananas are hungry plants
Bananas are heavy feeders that grow fast and crop on rich soil. Work in plenty of compost and well-rotted manure before planting, mulch thickly, and feed regularly through the growing season — a feed high in potassium supports flowering and fruiting. Combined with plenty of water, generous feeding is what drives a good bunch.
Cold-hardy bananas and overwintering
Most bananas are frost-tender: cold blackens the leaves and the soft pseudostem, and growth stops below about 14 °C (57 °F). The hardy Musa basjoo is the exception — its top is cut down by frost but the underground corm survives surprisingly hard winters under a thick, dry mulch, resprouting in spring. In cold regions, either grow a hardy type and mulch the crown heavily, or grow in pots and move them under cover before the first frost. See growing tropical fruit in cool climates.
How long until it fruits, and harvesting
Given warmth, a banana takes roughly 9–15 months from a sucker to a bunch. Each pseudostem flowers and fruits once, then dies back while a new sucker takes its place — so keep one strong sucker growing on as a replacement. Harvest when the fruit is plump and well-ribbed and the tiny flowers at the tips rub off easily; cut the whole hand and ripen it off the plant, as bananas ripen fast once they turn.
Common problems
Cold damage (grey skin, yellowing leaves) and wind (shredded leaves — normal, but shelter improves growth) are the usual issues. No fruit in a cool climate almost always means not enough heat, light or time. Watch for Panama disease and leaf-spot diseases in humid tropical gardens.
