Banana Plant

Banana Plant

            Banana (Musa) is a classic tropical plant. Its large leaves make an emphatic pleasant statement in any room; it gives a soothing (cool green color) feeling as an element of interior decoration. The plant is also prized as an ornamental plant (with or without the fruit). Of course, it symbolizes auspiciousness and sacredness in the traditional (Sanatana) Hindu ceremonies; according to one purana story, the plant represents a lady. In cold places too, it can be successfully grown in green houses or indoors in large pots. I happened to notice lots of banana plants in the Pittsburgh (Phipps conservatory) botanical garden.

            Many vegetables in the plant kingdom tend to be acidic – their tartness covers a wide spectrum, ranging from the tart apple (normally found early in the season) to the extremely sour tamarind. There are very few vegetables that are either alkaline or neutral. Raw banana is on the alkaline side. I first came to recognize this alkaline nature of banana, during my pre-college days. The ashes of dried banana stem and leaves exhibit this property very vividly. Using turmeric as (pH) an indicator, one can see the color change due to banana ashes. Thus, (raw) banana culinary dishes are valuable in lessening the deleterious effects of acidic foods. 

            My own association with this plant goes back to my teenage years. Our mother wanted to provide us with homegrown tasty bananas. Bananas are an excellent source of energy for growing kids, function as an excellent snack, particularly after exhausting physical activity. In those days, we had a retired teacher in our street, he had more than fifty banana plants in his garden. Often he had to remove the overgrown suckers (pups) and discard them, as part of thinning. Upon mother’s request, the teacher gave us four baby banana plants: two of Chakkerkeli (చక్కరకేళి, Poovan, Mysore AAB) and two Amrutapani (అమృతపాణి, Rasthali, Silk AAB).

            We brought them home (I carried couple of stems on my shoulders) and gently planted them next to our kitchen. We could see them right through our kitchen window. I still have vivid memories of our little kitchen garden. Situated in a coastal village, we had ample access to good quality water. The canal water (off of Godavari river) met all our needs; but mother was many years ahead of the times, and she did not want to waste our precious potable water. The bananas were irrigated with our bath water and kitchen washings (grey water). Yet the plants never complained, they were full of green foliage, without any disease, and enjoyed the tropical (near vertical) bright sun rays. Now I think: If they got a bit alkalinity from our bath water, it didn’t bother them, they (the plants) are alkaline too.

            Soon, they plants grew by leaps and bounds, they just went on putting weight (with increasing girth) and big leaves. In the village, you could never offend anyone, nor deny a friendly request. Often, neighbors would drop by our house and request a few plantain leaves. We could not tell them, “no”. So, mother would go around the plants every week and deliberately tear the plantain leaves. So, that way we did not have to give away large leaves to neighbors! Bananas need their precious large leaves for their own food production (photosynthesis). Just imagine how much food the tree (though it is not a real tree) has to produce and store for yielding a big cluster of 150 fruits.

            In the village, the plants grew quite well during first year. But they did not show inflorescence for many months. Mother got a bit worried and she promptly sought our farmer’s advice. “Just apply a bit of super phosphate, madam, everything will be alright”. He cautioned us to use only moderate amounts of fertilizer and that too, far away from the root system. Luckily, then, we had a large fertilizer warehouse in our backyard, and within a matter of weeks, we had our first banana fruit. Success at last! They were the best naturally ripened bananas I have ever tasted. Come to think of it, city folks nowadays go gaga (or bananas) over organic food. We had them, decades before, in villages and small towns. Beans, snake gourd, bottle gourd, eggplant, or amaranth, you name it, we had grown (mostly without any inorganic fertilizer) organically with no pesticide then. But more than the ripened fruit, what surprised both mother and myself was this: That last, ultimate or penultimate small leaf. Then slowly, the appearance of a big compound flower with many helical tiers (hands, అత్తములు). Mother made tasty dishes with the flower and the inner white stem too. Once or twice, mother had the big fruit suspended from overhead wooden beam – as and when I got hungry, just plucked a ripe yellow banana and enjoyed the sweet taste, with its strong amyl acetate flavor. It was at least four five years before I synthesized the ester in chemistry lab.

            What a marvelous tropical plant! In exchange for a little care and a bit of grey water, this great plant gave us everything, from cool shade, tasty fruit, to unique vegetarian dishes. When I finally discarded the massive stem in village canal waters, I had to bid a sad goodbye to it. I enjoyed its smooth trunk, via a last floatation ride on the waters. Ladies still use its buoyant concave stems as tiny boats to carry their oil lamps on waterfront.

Indoors Care

            Obviously, when we grow this plant indoors in a pot, we may not always get the fruit. It may take several years for the plant to gain maturity. Here, in our local temple, I did see the potted plant bearing fruit. But the fruit was quite small – more like a part of still life in a painting (or the fake plastic fruit seen in a hobby store).

            Several years back, I bought a little banana plant in a 4” pot from a local superstore for $ 3.00. Banana likes larger pots. A spacious growing container will provide ample room for the suckers. The plant does not demand high quality soil and this fact is borne out by the experience of south Indian farmers. I use whatever soil I have on hand: a bit of top soil mixed with one part compost and one part leaf mold. You can add a bit of perlite and some sand. Good drainage helps, but the plant can tolerate a bit of overwatering.

Repotting

            In pots, banana plant tends to give suckers (పిలకలు) all around. Most banana plants do not have any seed (useful for reproduction). New plants are grown either from suckers or by tissue culture techniques. The small offshoots look very attractive, like little children, they too ask for separate pots. The first  time I tried separating a sucker – it proved total disastrous.  Either its corm got injured or it failed to grow new roots rapidly. There are two types of suckers with banana plants: Some are in close proximity to the main stem and some that are spaced away from the mother plant. It is very difficult to separate the in-grown suckers from the mother plant. To eliminate overcrowding, such closely spaced (baby) suckers are cut off with a sharp knife. [It is a good practice to periodically clean gardening tools (pruning shears, knives) with soap water and rubbing alcohol].

            It is a bit easier to handle the outlying suckers. These suckers can be gently separated and grown into mature plants. Separation is best done during repotting process (fair weather helps too. Spring, summer, or fall times are the most appropriate periods for repotting). When I removed the root-ball from the old congested pot, I could see the entangled root system. We had to patiently gently separate the roots first, then with a sharp (kitchen) knife, we carefully sliced the soil – thus three separate plants with intact root balls were formed.

            For good drainage, the pot bottom was filled with coconut shells, broken (ceramic & clay) pot pieces, pine needles, and birch twigs. After centering the plant, the sides were packed with compost soil. Though we tried our best, getting the plant straight and centered in the pot is always tricky. Right now all plants are doing extremely well, putting on new leaves, and growing in height and diameter. In my experience I have never encountered any serious pest problem with banana. Though some banana varieties are prone to disease. I am not sure about the exact banana type in my possession; looks like we got a red banana variety. Copyright 2013

(Dedicated to T.S.L. and my innocent village folks)