Stuff Magazines

- The many reasons to grow your own, plus a variety guide.

There is much more to this herbaceous plant than its edible fruit. More gardeners are growing this delicious tropical plant, so here’s what you need to know to grow your own.

STORY: ELLEN SCHINDLER

Iclearly remember the awe that overcame me when I saw my first banana plant a mere few weeks after arriving in New Zealand in 2003. This was at the wonderful backpacker Ebb & Flow in Waipu. I was hooked straight away and one of these corms found its way into our garden when the place was closed and sold in 2005. Once we owned our own little slice of paradise in Auckland, the hunt for more began.

Lucky me, my work then often took me to Ōtāhuhu, a vibrant south Auckland suburb and home to a large, diverse Pasifika peoples population. It seemed to me that every other backyard was filled with large stands of bananas, full of banana bunches, large purple flowers and huge leaves swaying gently in the wind.

I fondly remember how generously the people shared their knowledge when I asked lots of questions about how to grow them or whether they tasted like “real“bananas. I went home not once but many times with a gift of a bunch or hands of fruit or shouldering a banana pup – generous gifts from the friendly Samoans, Tongans and Cook Islanders. It was not ask and you will be given, it was ask about it and you will be given.

And lucky me again, I continued my learning journey with the many friends from various ethnicities I made over the years. Most have grown up with these majestic plants and know a variety of interesting uses for the plant parts, their benefits and recipes – and it still seems my banana journey has barely started.

Even though a small number of banana enthusiasts and permaculture gardeners have been growing New Zealand’s No 1 imported fruit for decades, the plants are only now making their entrance into the realm of everyday gardeners and their backyards.

And for all the right reasons: importing the weight of nearly four Sky Towers, or 72 million kilograms of bananas a year comes with a massive carbon footprint. Overseas they are grown in large monocultures requiring lots of pesticides to counteract this highly unnatural way of growth. They are picked unripe, drenched in chemicals by people who receive less than minimum pay, to be shipped in refrigerated containers across the world. The next step in this circuitous route to our fruit bowls is the fumigation at the New Zealand border before they are sent off to specific ripening warehouses where ethylene does the job. Once the tinge changes towards yellow, they make their way towards the fruit and vegetable auctions, supermarkets and fruit shops.

Compare this with what you could get from horticulturalist Geoffrey Mansell’s Kotare Farm in Maungatapere. Geoffrey’s love affair with homegrown bananas started in 1978 when he saw them growing in Kerikeri while visiting the property of John McDairmid. Today, Geoffrey grows bananas in stands of three: grandmother, mother and mokopuna, thus providing a sustainable growth pattern and harvest without exhausting the huge clump of roots called corm.

No sprays are needed because – thanks to the strict border regulations – New Zealand has no real banana pests and diseases, apart from frantic pūkeko which can, overnight, shred a massive banana trunk to bits, causing it to collapse. Geoffrey’s bananas are allowed to ripen on the plant which means no special equipment is needed to store and ripen them, except a blue bag with a silver reflector which protects the fruit from birds, rats and the cold, and allows for up to 30% larger fruit. Geoffrey imports these bags from Australia and has a clever tool to clip them around the cluster way up high.

Geoffrey and his partner Craig Blockley started

Today, Geoffrey Mansell grows bananas in stands of three: grandmother, mother and mokopuna, thus providing a sustainable growth pattern and harvest without exhausting the huge clump of roots called corm.

supplying bananas to several Northland supermarkets about four years ago. To the best of Geoffrey’s knowledge, there were no New Zealand grown bananas commercially available for sale before that.

In addition to this success, Geoffrey has all the knowledge and passion to hunt for and grow a range of intriguingly diverse bananas types already in New Zealand (albeit not often as commercial crops). His most recent success is finding the Japanese type ‘Basjoo’. It’s a type particularly useful for producing fibre for yarn.

This project also gives Geoffrey the chance to pull all his botanical knowledge together. He is trialling different plant guilds outside as well as inside a massive grow tunnel.

Inside the tunnel feels like you have just landed in Thailand: soccerball-sized papayas grow under 50-60kg banana clusters, the banana plants with leaves reaching towards the 6.6m high tunnel, sharp-toothed pineapple plants and edible taro provide some kind of pretty, edible groundcover. Outside, he trials nitrogen-fixing sugarcane as a companion plant. Geoffrey says he is still waiting for an entrepreneur to knock on his door to invent a new subtropical food product with the sweet canes.

In New Zealand, it seems that not many gardeners are aware of the other uses of the banana plant. It’s not only the fruit that is useful – the large leaves are precious in cooking, lending their aroma to food wrapped in the leaves. For Pasifika people, the large leaves are a great XXL wrapper for umu and hangi, the traditional earth ovens for cooking food; best of all, they can be composted after use. In Southeast Asia, too, banana leaves are used to wrap food (including individual meals with rice, roti or noodles plus condiments) and also used as plates or platters which conveniently add a unique, subtle flavour to dishes.

In fact, all parts of this plant are usable and edible, including the purple flower also called bell or heart.

My Filipino friend Alma makes the most delicious banana flower in coconut cream – my personal favourite of all the flower recipes. My Thai and Burmese friends

In fact, all parts of this plant are usable and edible, including the purple flower also called bell or heart.

CONTENTS

en-nz

2022-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-11-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://stuffmagazines.pressreader.com/article/281857237473439

Stuff Limited