RandyGHO

I was out in my orchard today and wondered if some of the orchard practices might be useful in my Banana Grove(well 3 trees). here are a few things home orchards need to have done. Keeping the orchard floor clean is real important for home orchards I assume it is in home banana groves as well.

1. Orchard
   • Spray clippers with alcohol between cuts and between trees
   • Remove pruned limbs, burn or remove from orchard
   • Remove all dead leafs and fruit in the fall.

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Thinking outside the peel always.

Gabe15

Some of those practices are good to apply to banana in the tropics with certain disease management considerations, but in your case, since you are outside of the tropics and only deal with a few plants, I would recommend the opposite actually.

1. No need to clean tools between plants as the diseases which this practice is trying to control are extremely unlikely to be present.

2. I prefer to leave as much material as a can from the plant directly in the grove, it is instant free mulch which has many different benefits, and again, this stuff might be a good idea to remove if you have certain disease issues, but you should not be under that pressure in your climate and scale.

3. Basically same as above, just leave it all as mulch unless you don't like the look of it. If you don't want to use the banana based material as mulch, it would be a good idea to use something else. A heavy mulching is probably the single best easy things you can do to improve your bananas health.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.