Barney Oatmeal

Hi!

My first harvest of Orinocos is about ready, I think....
What signs should I look for to tell when they are ready?
I am not a banana guy, learning as I go - with your help!!!
Blessings,
Barney Oatmeal (Jim)

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"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

Abnshrek

Hope this helps :^) First fruit off tall orinoco

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Barney Oatmeal

Many thanks, Abnshrek! A picture speaks louder than a thousand words!
Looks like mine are reeeeeally close, so I need a BUNCH of boxes! - hope Joey's got 'em or can get 'em!

__________________
"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

jeffreyp

my experience with readiness of fruit is to wait until the fruit is about as plump as it's going to get then harvest the fruit. You can put ripe bananas or other fruit next to the freshly harvested bananas to induce ripening....or the lazy method is wait until the pseudostem falls over then harvest the fruit (;

Barney Oatmeal

Oh, really??? Mine appear to be very close to ready, though the stems are still pretty healthy.....
Lots of really plump bananas!

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"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

Abnshrek

Congrats & Happy Eating in the near future :^)

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Barney Oatmeal

Gonna be lots of people eating - there's 25 acres of 'em!

__________________
"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

DaveE

Congrats!!

Post a few pictures if you get a chance.

Dave

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rv

Barney, did I read that correctly, you have 25 acres of bananas?
How many tens of thousands of plants is that and how do you get that many planted without SOME experience?

Ray

bananimal

Barney ---- You're growing to sell, right? Cut down those bunches when fully plumped and still green. Get 'em to market. Save some for yourself - but let em ripen on the plant. Awesome fried maduros!!!

The Dwarf Orinoco was my first cultivar and produced big heavy racimes -- every time.

Dan

Barney Oatmeal

I'm a farmer, born and raised - just never grew bananas before - am totally wingin' it. I have never taken a count on plants - there are a buttload of 'em.
We've been sending truckloads of pups to Miami this year and we've still got five to nine pups on each plant. Personally, i think this thing is getting out of hand and I'm wishing I'd not started it, as it is eating my LIFE, time-wise.
Started with slips we'd bought, potted them, transplanted to the field when around 3 to 4 feet tall. Several batches, so it'd take a record search or a day in the field to count.

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"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

rv

That's impressive, I think it would be a full time job to manage an acre or two.
Are they all the same variety?

I'm sure it could get out of hand, just the few plants I have increase exponentially every season..

Happy farming

Barney Oatmeal

It is literally KILLING me to keep up with this, yes. Should have four guys, fulltime, at least during harvest - I have myself and my little Irishman, Mark-O, who works harder and smarter than all three I had before put together.
Mark-O works around 60 hours per week, I work around three days during the week and have worked the past seven weekends.
Hopefully when we get some cash back in the till, we can hire another fulltimer.
I'm just ready to get on my Goldwing and goooooooooo for a month.

P.S. Come see us anytime you want - make sure to message or call first, as I am not always here and Mark-O is big on security and won't let anyone in without my say-so.
Yes, all Orinocos, as the "money" partner insisted due to his market in Miami.

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"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

chasbear

Yep I'm jealous also, since I'm only at about 3 acres and planting more all the time, but 25 acres??!! Yeah you bet you're feeling overworked. I've heard it takes about 1 laborer (or bananero) per hectare (2.5 acres). So we are over that amount here, but our expansion being what it is I'm glad to train the extra hands. We also don't have a "money partner" so our expansion is slow.

As far as harvesting, at least for our varieties here, we look for the "corners" of the fruit to disappear. For example, all of the young fruits will have distinct squarish corners to them until they fill out sufficiently to harvest "green." As stated earlier by jeffreyp and bananimal, you want them to get plump, then cut them off above the fruit for dehanding. We cut off the flower with male buds as soon as they've gone 3 dead hands below the fruit, and mark the date (week number) right on the plant, on the peduncle above the fruit & on the stalk as well as putting a colored marker on the bag if you're using those. This way, if you have uniform growing conditions, they will all take the same number of weeks to mature or advance to the state where you want to harvest them. We go out weekly to do this process; cutting flowers, bagging and marking the plant of each bunch that's reached this point. Our field has some flat areas, and some places that slope down to a creek, so we tend to get a little differentiation; the ones nearest the creek seem to be the biggest plants, I guess from getting the most run-off topsoil and other nutrients.

I am not familiar with Orinocos, so I'm not the best judge of that particular variety, but I will comment this way: the photos that Abnshrek put up the link for, show what I call "corners," and none of what we harvest around here for commercial purposes would be mature enough yet, looking like that. For a good idea of what we look for as far as plumpness, here's some of our Senoritas that are really "there":
SENORITA
The fingers at the center show lines of where the "corners" used to be, but those babies have really filled out to their sweetest potential without splitting and there's nothing other than that hint that there used to be a corner there. I hope this helps some, and don't hesitate to ask more questions. I've only been at growing naners a couple of years now here, I'm no expert by any means, but I've been learning as fast as I can. Have you seen the videos put out by Dr. Nelson from Hawaii? He's a member on here and has posted his videos on YouTube here: These are immensely helpful as well as being exceptionally informational; I've viewed it numerous times.

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Bananaman88

Jim and Charles: It really sounds like you guys have your hands full! Sounds like you both have pretty neat operations. We'd love to see some pics if you get the chance.

Barney Oatmeal

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"We Dig Our Fingers In The Ground, Heave And Turn Our World Around" (Tom Waits)

chasbear

Yeah, lets see those pics!

You must have a tractor there to get something done or else you have the luxury like us here of getting laborers for just $2 a day! Still, I'm dying to have some motorized, wheeled equipment to at least help with the spraying and hauling. Here in the developing world small tractors and even the engines to build one up are few and far between.

Our regular afternoon rains 10 months out of the year takes care of things like irrigation. We did have 5 months of drought from Jan to May, though, from the el Nino that just passed thru and our plants are just now showing what the stress did to them; so far we've lost about 100 or so fruiting bunches. There just wasn't any water anywhere that I could have done anything about it with and no budget either, for that matter. Heck, we didn't even have water for the house, as well as going without electricity everyday because the hydro-powered electric companies were so short on supply.

We have hung on here with our own self-imposed shoestring budget since we didn't have the $5000 to get 2000 plants developed. I hope that you also have some arrangement that makes your situation plausible in the end. Funny thing... I sold my 1978 Goldwing along with many other toys when I decided to move here from the US 2 years ago! I'm looking forward to getting a small single cylinder bike for roaming around here in the near future. Goldwings are unheard of, though. Whenever I tell someone here that I used to have a 4 cylinder, 1000 cc bike, they just have NO concept; nearly ALL of the bikes here are singles, 150 cc or less!

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