We are lucky to have an abundance of banana trees in our yard. We both love them, and they are chock full of potassium. I also love making banana bread when I have lots of over-ripe bananas.
I learned that banana trees are actually large herbs. The succulent, juicy stems arise from a fleshy corm. Suckers continually spring up around the main plant with the oldest sucker replacing the main plant as it fruits and dies. Smooth, oblong to elliptical, fleshy stalked leaves unfurl in a spiral around the stem. A terminal spike, the inflorescence, shoots out from the heart in the tip of the stem. As it opens, clusters of white flowers are revealed. As the young fruit develops, they form slender green fingers which grow into a “hand” of bananas that droops due to its weight until the bunch is upside down.
When is the right time to harvest them? Generally, banana tree harvesting can begin when the fruit on the upper hands are changing from dark green to a light greenish yellow and the fruit is plump. Banana stalks take 75-80 days from flower production to mature fruit. The fruit will generally be 75% mature at picking, allowing the fruit to ripen in the next 1-2 weeks.
Banana plants take around nine months to grow up and produce banana tree fruit, and then once the bananas have been harvested, the plant dies. It sounds almost sad, but baby banana trees will replace the parent plant. This is when suckers, or infant banana plants, begin to grow from around the base of the parent plant. New suckers will form, which can be removed and transplanted to grow new banana trees and one or two can be left to grow in place of the parent plant.
Craig just harvested some of our bananas. Though they were a little greener than what we would have liked, we were anxious to harvest some before the gardener did. We noticed that some of our banana plants had been chopped down after the last time he was here. There is, however, plenty to go around. I look forward to monitoring their progress!
It’s early November and the wet season seems to be slowing dying down. We’ve had a few very nice days in a row. With the dry season on the horizon, so will be the winds that accompanies summertime in Panamá.
