GROWING DWARF BANANA TREES IN YOUR GARDEN

growing bananas in your backyard is a very rewarding experience in today's episode we look at a three year journey for growing our dwarf banana plants from planting till harvest so let's begin in June in June of 2014 we planted our dwarf banana plant this is the dwarf Rajapuri banana plant now you can also get other dwarf varieties like the Cavendish or other varieties from your local garden stores we got ours from Home Depot and fast forward a year in July 2015 you can see that the plant is well established and one thing you do need to note is that you need to choose a nice sunny location for your banana plant at least 6 hours of Sun a day and in about a year you will see that the banana plant has started producing its first bud, which will produce a bunch of bananas now in the first year you need to make sure that you are providing adequate nutrients to the plant you can use a all-purpose fertilizer a balanced fertilizer or you can use a high nitrogen fertilizer as well because bananas need a lot of nitrogen to produce these big leaves which in turn will produce good bananas and as you can see here in August of 2015 the plant has started producing a lot of bananas as you can see here and it will keep producing bananas for some more bunches before it will stop producing bananas and around September you can see that the production of the bananas is almost complete and at this stage what you can do is you can harvest the bud of the plant because once you harvest the bud the bananas will still keep growing on the top so the bud or the flower itself is very much edible and here we're going to look at the harvest of the flowers what you do is just chop off the bottom part of the stem where the banana bud was produced and you will notice that just on top of the banana flower or the banana bud the bananas actually were very small and literally stopped producing so you can just see how your banana production goes and then you will know when to harvest your bud and the bud is very delicious the flowers are very delicious and in my previous video that I posted about growing bananas have posted a recipe as well and in October 2015 you can see that the bananas have started growing larger and they will continue to grow larger now you can either let them grow larger on the plant and if you have moderate temperatures the bananas will keep growing on the plant or you can start harvesting your fruits now the way I harvest the fruit is just harvest one by one some of the bunches that are produced starting with the largest ones but you can even start at the bottom as I'm showing you here it is just easier to harvest the fruits at the bottom and you can either eat them raw or you can ripen them they ripen very quickly on the shelf the only maintenance that you need to do for your banana plants is pruning and this is more for aesthetic purposes once the leaves turn yellow you can chop off the leaves from the sides and although it's just a lot of work it makes your plant look a lot more beautiful as you can see here these leaves that are yellowing and becoming brown can be removed and this doesn't really have any effect on the fruits now you can see here fast forward a couple of months more and the fruits will keep getting a little larger on the plant and they haven't ripened yet because we've had some cold days during this time during the winter season and let's talk a little bit more about the fertilizers so if you have a well-prepared ground with a lot of manure that's the best thing you can do for your banana plant mix in a lot of compost a lot of manure and banana grows pretty much in any kind of soil we have a naturally sandy soil here in Southern California where I live and it produces great banana plants as you can see here you can see a hint of ripening on the plants and they will still keep getting larger as they grow on the plant and here you can see that we continue to harvest the bananas the fruits as time goes on and once again they will ripen very well when kept on the Shelf now if you want you can even harvest the entire bunch if you can consume that many bananas but they usually all ripen at once so it's better if you just keep harvesting one by one each bunch and that way you get a steady supply of bananas right from your backyard and these homegrown bananas are absolutely delicious and although this time we ripened our banana of the tree we will soon see how you can even ripen your bananas on the plant and here you can see it's a beautiful looking harvest the bananas are very nice and with just a dwarf tree you are able to harvest a lot of bananas now with bananas once the lifecycle is complete you have to remove and chop off the tree because one plant produces one and only one cluster of bananas so here you can see that the tree is pretty heavy so I just use a saw to first chop off the tree in parts so I would start with the top part of the tree and once that is done I remove the bottom part of the tree and once that is done this will give more space for the other trees to grow around the main plant now what you're gonna see here is how I use the stem of the plant now after you chop the tree off the banana plant is still useful because the tender and the center part of the stem is very delicious it can be used in a variety of recipes there are some delicious recipe recipes that you can use the stems for so the way you use the stem is first you start removing the sides the thick parts of the trunk and that takes quite a while and it's a tedious process but what you do is you just keep going and keep removing the layers finally you will reach what is the middle and the tender part of the stem as you can see here we're now almost approaching the center part of the stem and it will be a little tiered as you can see here you'll have some larger areas and some smaller areas now this part of the stem is very delicious and as I mentioned you can use it in a variety of dishes you can google some recipes for the keyword here and you'll get a lot of dishes for this plant now while we were doing this there was another plant that was growing right next to that and a couple years later you can see that it has produce some buds and flowers and some bananas so that one banana plant that we removed made way for the other plants to grow now in May 2017 we were actually planning to go on vacation so I set up a drip irrigation system for the fruit trees and banana plants are really thirsty they need a lot of water so make sure that your banana plants are getting adequate water and that'll really help your banana plants grow very well I noticed that once I put the drip irrigation system in place my banana plants were a lot more greener and we're producing much better than when I was hand watering them and you can see here this is the second plant that grew and it has produced some really good banana clusters as you can see here which will go on to form some good fruit and once again we are going to be harvesting the buds first the buds and the flowers will be harvested first so that the rest of the bananas can continue to grow on the tree and this is a question that has been asked by some of my viewers is whether the harvest of the bud causes any problems in the fruit growth and the answer is no I have never seen any problems with growing fruits once the bud is harvested now fast forward to November 2017 you can see that some of the fruits have started ripening and these fruits have ripened on the tree and they've ripened pretty quickly you can see here you can literally remove the fruits from the tree and these fruits that have ripened on the tree these are absolutely delicious very sweet very delicious bananas and they've reached the full size of their growth and well by growing bananas at home this is something that you can achieve you can ripen fruits on the tree eat them fresh a right off the tree and that's a big win for you because the bananas that you get at the store have all been harvested while they were green and they've been ripened using ethylene gases and warehouses so not only a natural way of ripening bananas but what you see here is the best way you can grow and eat some really delicious bananas at home and you can even harvest the entire bunch and they're so fragile that you can see they're just falling off the tree but if you're a little more careful you will be able to harvest them in bunches like you see here and once again this is the dwarf rajapuri banana and I'm also growing the dwarf Cavendish banana which would be ready for harvest in maybe a year or two but this banana plant that reaches about six foot in height is a really good way to grow delicious bananas at home and you can see here the harvest looks absolutely gorgeous and it's also absolutely delicious and eventually over a period of time you will see that all the bananas on the plant will ripen very quickly in fact in a matter of days because each ripening banana releases natural gases ethylene gases that ripen the entire bunch and once again once the banana is harvested you need to make sure that you remove the tree this is very important for the lifecycle of the banana plant so that the other trees around it have room to grow and once you are done harvesting the banana there's really no point in keeping the trunk or the tree alive you don't have any benefit by doing so and what we will also be doing once again is harvesting the tender part of the stem the center part of the stem and this is how you do it you just once again open up the plant and then try to you know remove the layers and go towards the center of the stem now banana is a plant that doesn't have any insects and nor does it have any diseases very easy to grow in your home garden so I really hope you try out growing banana plants you can easily grow them and zone 9 or above and if you're in other zones you might want to plant it in a container and then keep it either in a greenhouse or take it indoors and you can still grow these dwarf banana plants easily at home so there we have it folks that was our episode on growing bananas happy gardening