hanabananaman

Thanks for sharing such an interesting way to grow. I would like to try it but I wonder if my extreme temps over 110F in the summer might be a problem. I work hard to keep my rootballs shaded when in pots and could do the same with this. Do you think it would help me to use smaller 5 to 10 gallon containers?
Thanks again
Larry

momoese

I've started an uncovered compost pile dead center in my veggie garden. Will see what happens.

Iunepeace

Thank you very much for taking the time and effort to disturb your growing conditions to show us what looks to be such an effective, simple and CHEAP (college student) way to get bananas roaring to go! My yard bananas have really suffered from neglect *cough* parents *cough* while I was away at school and I'm about to starting nursing them again now that I have some free time.

I went out to check the mat and four different sets of bunches had flowered between first ratoon (late 2012/early 2013) and the bananas shriveled to little black husks. Any idea what might be responsible? Again thanks for the guide, will be excited to try something like this the next time the lawn is mowed.

Lastly I'm sure there's between 15-20 plants in that one mat. The first shoot I got put out at least 4 pups and after the main plant flowered and died the second generation must've pupped like there was no tomorrow (and while I was away and couldn't trim them no less). As a result the whole thing is clogged with plants, competition for nutrients is probably one of the reason for the four bunches not ripening, along with other banana mats in the area. I was constrained for space (and too lazy to pickaxe more holes in the caliche) at the time of planting the 6-10 starter varieties I got from my uncle's farm in another island during sometime in 2011 and didn't use the recommended 6' spacing, more like 3' not to mention the soil is pretty bad quality-wise, so they're probably not being fed well.

I'm looking at two options to remedy the current situation:

1. Take out some varieties to free up space, and grow those in containers. I have a few very short ones (suspected [Super] Dwarf Cavendish) so I think I can manage to get them to fruiting height in pots. Thoughts?

2. Feed the living daylights out of them with [chemical fert or manure] + seaweed, see that they get adequate amounts of water (my parents weren't watering them at all really, so I guess only rain now and then provided moisture, and our soil drains decently fast) and hope for the best. This may not be as realistic an option in the long term since eventually the generations will start growing into the spaces between and crowding each other out, which leads me to my last query.

I've been doing a bit of research into the whole trimming the mat thing to manage active p-stems for better yields. I don't think I've killed a banana plant in my life (terrible softie when it comes to culling plants) but I think I could muster the gumption to cut back that 15 p-stem mat so that the main shooters dont get crowded out (would also be more sightly since the thing now is a riotous mess of dead leaves). What sort of trimming should I do, one main stem per mat and just leave a follower and maybe a tiny second for the third crop for every cycle? Or a few small plants with one main or a couple mains with one follower each per mat?

I really love gardening in general and fell into a banana obsession about 2 years ago after seeing the ridiculous vitality well fed banana plants exhibit (not to mention hefty produce returns) so it's a bit discouraging to see the state of my plants and the amount of work ahead of a well functioning mat but I really want my bananas to get back on their feet and do well again

Last thing, the 15 p-stem had never been identified conclusively (none of the others either really, my areas notoriously ingrained in using local names to describe varieties so I don't know what I'm growing besides the short one that I'm pretty sure is a [Super] Dwarf Cavendish for all accounts) so I'll post a photo or two of it to see if anyone can spot what it is. The bunch below is the only fruit I ever got from it; flowered mid-July right before I went away to college the next month and did my heart good to see my first foray in banana growing finally produce something. At the time that banana plot had much more spacing in it since all those were just starting out and weren't trying to compete to out-pup one another. I'll see if I can rustle up an old picture to post tomorrow to show how small everything was. Maybe because of long-gone nutrients, or more frequent watering and feeding (dont think my parents fertilized them but I used to throw down manure and seaweed when I could) but everything was pretty green and doing well back then so I'd like to turn back the clock so to speak. Here's the harvested bunch:



and the fruiting p-stem itself:

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raygrogan

How to clean up / thin out an overcrowded mat .... others probably have more refined ideas but here is what I'd do:

If time is tight, just a machete and a little dripper bottle of straight (41%) glyphosate can make a good start. I've had good luck with killing ONE PUP PER MAT just whacking the pup and dripping a few drops on the remaining stump. No collateral kills, but I have never tried killing say 5 and leaving 2. You might want to only do the drips to a few, and just cut the rest, and do the final kill on them later. (If you have millions to whack, see discussions on reciprocating saws and chainsaws.)

If I have the luxury of time I use a 4" trenching shovel (by Corona, from an irrigation store, where you might be looking into timers like by DIG if you leave for a long time again). And have a few buckets of prime dirt all mixed up. Dig out the offending pups and fill the hole with good fertilized dirt. Once again I have not done too many at a time - and once when very wet and windy I had some blow down after I removed just a few pups. (See also discussions on tools like Dan the bananimal's Pitango bar with foot assist.)

As far as how many plants per mat there are good discussions and you seem to have the gist of the pros to get grade A bananas - one and a follower and maybe the next tiny one. But as long as they are not crazy crowded, and as long as you only let "swords" grow (vs "flags" or water suckers), I think you'll get more bananas more often, just not quite as big, by leaving more plants. (I've never really tested this, or looked at real data.)

Iunepeace

Thanks for the reply Mr. Grogan. I did harden my heart a bit yesterday and took the machete to the mat to finally start clearing it up a bit. The center of the mat was not visible because of the masses of dead leaves that had fallen down or were hanging off the sides of the plants and a good portion of the cleanup was spent just chopping some of those off to make it more feasible to remove some of the stems.

I only managed to cup down about three older stems and one that had just recently flowered few weeks/months ago but its bananas had dried up on the stem (very sad). Mat still has a long way to go but I feel much better about it now that it's renovating is in progress at least.

I was thinking about digging them out like you did with quite a few of yours in the photo albums but I'm terribly fond of energy-conservative gardening principles (besides pickaxing out holes in the caliche for new plants) so I'll probably stick with cutting them down to ground. Also the shovel we have appears to not be too sharp so I can't do too much digging with it methinks. Oh to not be on a college student salary and have work funds to put into the garden

In the very near future I'm going to be getting some seaweed and will probably use that as the main form of mulch/soil amendment for now, and maybe some manure if I can get a bag or two. I do agree with the smaller is better approach for growing; even with my less than stellar soil the first hand that mat ever produced at between 60-80 bananas, pretty good for the growing conditions it had endured. I'm leaning more and more towards believing it's really Blue Java so if so it would be great to get another bunch to harvest.

To be fair, at the time of it flowering I had pretty much just planted all my bananas a few months ago so there was tons more growing space, and it was only that main stem that was maturing. Now there are about four or five larger ones growing on that main one not to mention older dying stems and lots of pups. I think clearing it down to one or two mains is the best option for fruit potential; the ratoon crop would have easily been over 100 hands I think if the mat was maintained, and also I believe this is the 3rd or 4th generation cycling through now, which means I've missed out on quite a few potential harvests. Lastly I'm looking forward to implementing some form of PR's grass-feeding method of keeping the plants sustained since it looks incredibly effective, simple and most importantly CHEAP

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