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More Bananas and Plantains

just click this pic to go to the PLANTAIN AND BANANA PAGE!**Banana (Normal sweet eating variety) Musa acuminata or Musa spp or Musa sapientum
Bananas are one of the prettiest and most exotic plants in the garden if you can find a place for them that is out of the wind. Winds quickly tear the huge green leaves to shreds as you can see in the photograph on the right.
The plants yield a great amount of fruit periodically on one stem. After about five years, new plants have to replace the old. Depending on the variety you plant they will grow to a height of twenty to thirty feet.
Benefits:
1. Bananas contain the minerals potassium and magnesium which in recent studies are said to correlate positively with bone strength.
2. If you have an upset stomach, eat a banana; it may help.
Insects and Diseases: We have found that bananas on our property are especially subject to infestations of nematodes which though unseen cause a rotting of the base of the banana plant under the soil surface. Normal procedures we've been told include digging up the infected plants and soaking them in what are very toxic nematocides. That didn't seem at all appealing, but planting marigolds by the hundreds helped a great deal. It was a slower, but longer lasting and much safer cure. Bananas are not plagued by many insects except the banana borer.
Photographed: In our banana garden at our home in Montserrat.
Text & Photographs Copyrighted ©KO 2004/2007
 

Baby Sweet Bananas Variety Unknown
This banana plant was a gift from a departing expatriate and we have no idea what it is. What we do know is that it is delicious and very sweet. The photograph on the right was taken two weeks after the one on the left and you can see how quickly the fruit develops.
Photographed: Beside our young mango tree at our home in Montserrat.
Text and Photographs Copyrighted ©KO 2007
**Cooking Banana (Not a Plantain) Musa hybrid
We were given this banana by a Canadian fellow who had sold his home in Montserrat and so was leaving the island. He also gave us a few of his wife's lovely orchids, though most of them died in the ash fall of 2003. The banana survived and this year bore fruit. Our neighbor Jack, a Montserratian who spent his working years in the USA and is now retired, took a look at our banana patch and said, "That is a cooking banana." We spent a bit of time talking trying to distinguish it from a plantain, but we never really got the idea, though we did have a wonderful harvest of these bananas. They are more squared in shape than sweet bananas and they NEVER get sweet, even when they are brownish and soft and appear perfect for banana bread. They really are cooking bananas.
From: The Dominican Republic
Text Copyrighted ©KO2008

Lake Atitlan Bananas
I don't know what variety this banana plant is, but take a look at how tall it is and the quantity of ripening bananas on this one plant.
Photographed: In the village of San Marcos on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala
 Text and Photograph Copyrighted ©KO 2010

 

 

 
 

 
Mother Banana or in Spanish Madre Banano
This banana was growing along side the country dirt road that we take in the mornings when we are going shopping in the town market. It is very tall and has a hugely thick trunk as you can see in the photograph to the left, but it didn't strike us as unusual until it put out its flower which is unlike any other banana flower we've seen. Look at the photograph on the right. We asked a local fellow passing by what it is called and he said, "Madre Banano," with a good deal of respect for this prolific banana plant.
Photographed: Along the roadside in Hacienda San Buenaventura in Guatemala in May 2010.
Planting and Care: I don't yet know about the planting of this unusual banana, but we were told that it will produce for more than two decades. All of the banana and plantain plants that we know produce bananas once and then produce side shoot plants that will also each produce bananas only once before dying. As it turns out the bananas produced on this plant are small, only about six inches long and they are full of watermelon sized seeds so it is not as attractive a plant as we first thought. Still it will be fun to have one in the garden in Montserrat just to see folks faces when the see the banana flower.
 Text and Photographs Copyrighted ©KO 2010

**Plantain Musa paradisiaca L.
This is the heavy cooking banana plant and its name, plantain, is an African word for banana. We call them platanos machos in Mexico to distinguish them from sweet eating bananas. It has been said that a plot of ground that will grow 50 pounds of wheat or 100 pounds of potatoes will grow 4000 pounds of plantains. Since they can be eaten in so many ways, it seems a shame they are not even more widely used. We particularly like them aged till the skin turns black, then peeled, fried in butter and served with pork or mixed into a curried rice dish.
Photographed: In our banana garden at our home in Montserrat.
Text and Photographs Copyrighted ©KO 2007/2010

 

Red Banana Musa Sumatrana zebrina rojo
Photographed: In the Botanical Garden at Hotel Atitlan on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala.
Text & Photograph Copyrighted ©Krika.com 2010

 
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