Going Bananas

I was so excited yesterday to look up from the bottom of the garden and see I have another banana about to flower. For those who don't know the joys of growing your own bananas yet, the flower is the start of what will become your bunch of bananas. Last year, almost a year after planting two suckers that a friend had given me, I had my first two bunches of home grown bananas. The tricky thing is that like the small hand of bananas you buy and leave on the bench to ripen, the whole lot ripen all at once and I'd estimate that one of my bunches last year would have had in excess of 40 bananas on it. Thats a lot of bananas to deal with at once.

You can see the flower 'bud' in the centre of the image.

After picking the bunch, I've discovered then ripen quite quickly if I hang them inside off of the rafter in the lounge. (Just a note here, be careful for the sap, it stains, hence the newspaper on the floor). It also makes them easier to access. Fresh and newly ripe they are delicious to just walk past, grab one and snack on it, even my chooks like them (although it's interesting to note that they wouldn't touch a store bought one). The rest I chopped up and froze in tupperware containers thinking I'd use them in smoothies or even get motivated enough to do a banana cake. I felt that those two would be plenty to keep my happy, until I discovered banana icecream that is.



My grandaughter helping herself to one off a ripened bunch earlier this year.

 Those first two banana trees produced their own suckers. Most of the websites and blogs I googled suggested that you remove all suckers but one, so you are left with the leader (the first big one) and a follower which is the one that will replace it when you cut down the original after it delivers what will be it's first and only bunch.  This is so that the bananas put their efforts into producing fruit rather than growing the developing suckers. I have to admit, that laziness meant I've got more suckers than I should have and a few months back I got hubby to dig some out and we've established another two spots in the garden with their own two banana plants growing. These ones are coming along nicely, but it will be a year before I'll see them fruiting.



In the centre you can see one of the birds which visit the flowers daily. This photo was taken in early October so it's taken almost 2 months to form the fruit from this time.

 So last years two 'followers' became the leaders and were doing well, have flowered and now have set fruit, so it was a real shock to see that one of the 'followers' is also now beginning to flower.



Bananas growing on the bunch.


Then delight turned to panic last night as I was working late in the garden and saw not just one bat, but two land in my banana tree! Both flew off again, but now I'll have to watch very closely for the first signs of ripening on the bunches that are hanging there ready to make my move before the bats do. If  anyone has any suggestions on how I can deter the bats from my bananas please let me know.

The bananas bekonning to bats in the late day. How do they even know they are there?

Gardening Update

Only a short time to spend in the garden today as we’re off to lunch with friends. A quick round up this morning of any bits ready for picking.
Harvest today:
6 x Lemonade lemons
3 x Passionfruit
1 x Small Capsicum
9 x Gooseberries
A large pile of cherry tomatoes and another two nice large ones



The chickens have lain well again this week & I have a dozen eggs from them. They are laying 3 a day now (hold on, doing the maths on this, I think some may be disappearing to the helper gnomes home??)

Hubby has been keen for more of the lemons as he’s worked out they are great for making lemonade and I have to say, it tastes pretty great too. Up until about 6 weeks ago we were failing miserably with doing anything with the fruit from this tree. It was one of the few remaining trees left on the block and we assumed because of the shape of the green fruit that it was an orange tree (actually the picture on the top of the blog is fruit on the tree). We would wait patiently for the fruit to colour up, and of course it never turned orange. That got us suspicious so we did some research & found out it was a lemonade tree. Again we waited patiently for the fruit to turn golden yellow, but it would fall off rotten to the ground before this ever happened. We thought it must have been lacking minerals or water or even diseased although it looked pretty healthy. It had reached the point where even I had given up and had decided to let hubby dig it out & replace it with another new citrus. That was until just recently I discovered via comments on a gardening chat area that they recommend you pick this citrus when it’s just starting to show the first blush of yellow, that once it is yellow, it’s too late. Talk about ‘saved by the bell’. Not just the tree but us too. Imagine we would have been waiting years for another tree to get to this stage.
I would recommend this lemon to anyone who wants to be able to turn their lemons into a drink that doesn’t have the really tart bite of a real lemon tree. These are quite a bit sweeter and you don’t get the tart finish you relate to the aftertaste of a normal lemon.
Our fruit isn’t particularly attractive, it’s quite knobbly and they aren’t the quintessential shape you equate with a normal lemon, but once you’ve tasted them, you’ll forgive them their little bit of ugliness.

Rainy day work

A light rain has kept me house bound today, but no complaints as it was well overdue. I was thrilled to have accomplished two things from my list. The first was to scrub, and I do mean down on hands & knees 'scrub' my floors to remove the muddy build up that has accumulated on the painted concrete floors. The concrete floors have proved much easier to maintain then the old carpet that was there when we bought the place, however mud tracked in on wellies, and on the many childrens feet that have visited gets stuck in the grooves of the concrete left from the original trowel marks. Although I've swept regularly, and hubby has run the mop over it, it was needing a serious scrub to bring it up nicely.

We opted for the painted concrete because the very old and threadbare carpet just had to go and I really don't know what I want to replace it with yet, not to mention the cost of putting an alternative down. I had bought paving paint originally to paint over the red brick pavers in the spare room & our now properly enclosed back deck area. After living with them though for over a year & a half I've come to appreciate the simplicity of them as they were and presto, this gave me paving paint for my bare concrete. For all those wondering, yes, it's cold, but nothing slippers can't fix and some inexpensive blue & white cotton rugs from Ikea. The rugs are small enough that I can still put them in the washing machine & they come up well each time.

Last day off, I stripped the carpet from the spare room and scraped away the glue residue. Today after a good scrub, I've started painting the floor in here too.

All the while I was in my cleaning frenzy I've had brown vinegar on the stovetop. With sugar added I've slowly reduced two litres to under one, and the result is a beautiful caramelised balsamic vinegar. After one of the girls from work (ex chef) told me how easy it was, I've been dying to give it a go.

Also I'm pleased to see my chickens are also back to laying. It's been sporadic, but one or two eggs a day is a great start. I read somewhere that the chickens normally begin laying again after the winter solstice, so I guess it's true.

From the garden today:

a dozen eggs (collected over the week)

two beautiful large tomatoes

heaps of little cherry tomatoes from self seeded plants

one lone passionfruit

a handfull of small chillies

2 little gooseberries