As well as our own Lady Finger Bananas, this season we are also offering two other varieties.

Goldfinger: (SOLD OUT)

These have a similar growth habit to Lady Finger bananas but are slightly more compact, and in our experience they are a little more cold hardy too. The fruit are similar to a supermarket Cavendish except smaller, and with a sweeter, richer flavour.

 

Dwarf Cavendish: (SOLD OUT)

These plants are much smaller than the other varieties, reaching about 2-2.5m in height, so they are a good option for a hothouse or if space is limited. Bunches can still be huge, and the fruit are similar to the Goldfinger above. they require more shelter and heat than the other varieties in order to fruit well.

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Kiwis love bananas. Aotearoa has the highest consumption rate per capita in the world, consuming more than 90,000 tonnes per year. The vast bulk of this is imported, but bananas actually grow very well in the warmer parts of Aotearoa.

Bananas like a warm sheltered location, with well drained soil, and lots of fertilizer and water. They grow to around 3-5 metres in height and form a large clump about 2 metres across if not thinned.

 

They can grow well in heavier clay soils so long as the roots are not in standing water for long periods of time. Foliage is damaged by even light frosts, but plants will recover so long as the clump is well established. Growth of the stems will slow and stop when temperatures drop to around 15 degrees Celsius, but will begin again when the temperature rises.

 

Bananas take approximately 3 years to begin fruiting, or less if well cared for. After an individual stem has borne fruit it dies, and should be cut out. Flowering and fruiting can occur all throughout the year, but is more likely in summer due to faster growth. If too many stems are present in a clump then the banana bunches will be smaller, therefore excessive pups should be thinned regularly. These can be planted to form new clumps.

 

As well as the delicious ripe fruit, here at Twin Falls we also get two other meals from this useful plant; the flowers which we use as a vegetable in soups, stir fries and curries, and the green fruit which we slice thinly and fry to make delicious chips. When used green like this before the sugars form, bananas are a highly digestible source of complex carbohydrate and can be eaten as a staple food. We have found that carbohydrates are one of the hardest nutrients to obtain from a food forest system so bananas are very important for this reason.

 

Banana plants are a key element in our food forest, not just for their food value but also for the shelter and soil building services they provide for the plants around them and for the system as a whole. They are fast growers, sheltering other fruit trees while they are young and producing huge amounts of biomass to be chopped and dropped every time a bunch of bananas is harvested. The large amount of water stored in the stems makes a valuable mulch during the dry season, slowly releasing moisture into the soil. In our food forest systems we plant a banana every 4 metres all along our tree rows. A key plant for Syntropic Agroforestry and Permaculture food forest systems.

 

We sell our plants as bare rooted “bulbs”, which are actually the base of the stem with the top cut off and the roots trimmed. The whole bulb can be buried below the soil (the deeper the better) when planted in the ground, and will send up a new shoot from the center after a week or two. Planting this way prevents water loss through excessive foliage, and has the added benefit of being much cheaper to ship than large potted plants.

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Size: Bare rooted bulbs