This is a 15-month-old Blue Java mat grown from a 1.5 ft tall water sucker, and she has to be the happiest banana I have ever grown. I've been using her as a garden/yard waste dump by building a pile of organic refuse around her, and the results I've gotten from this have blown my mind. It's crazy how you can grow such strong plants with such a simple and sustainable technique.
I established her with a soil amendment of chicken manure, dry organic fertilizer with mycos, azomite, JADAM microorganism solution, and wood chip humus - plus a warm season cover crop cycle. Ever since the cover crops finished up about a year ago, I basically just been piling garden refuse around the base of the bananas. Crop waste, green manure, old potting soil, fruit and veggie scraps, cardboard, paper bags, graywater, and even a rotting wicker basket and some heat treated pallet wood.
Since planting I fertilized her twice with some leftover 3-3-3 organic fish and kelp fertilizer I had just to free up shed space, but she probably didn't need it. All this organic material has been composting down around the mat, and the soil is now rich and crawling with worms, centipedes, sowbugs, and all sorts of other little critters. See pic of the base of the mat with shears for scale and a pic of the topsoil underneath. All the perlite is from the old potting mix I have chucked around her.
I tossed some old rotting sweet potato tubers in there recently and they have also sprouted and taken root. It seems like they will make a great friend for the banana, as I know they do well in part shade in SoCal.
The daughter that came up last season is almost as thick as the mom now yet is only 2/3 as tall. The whole mat has popped out eight pups since March and the mom is about to throw out her first flag leaf. So stoked for fruit!
I wish I had thought to try this earlier. This is such a fantastic and low effort way to deal with compostables using all of our favorite plant. Has anyone else done this? How has it worked out for you?