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 if you like this video do give us a thumbs up
if you grow bananas yourself do let us know in the comments below what are the
challenges you faced growing bananas and what advice or comments would you have
for our fellow viewers we'll see you again soon happy gardening