Creating a banana circle

Did you know that the beautiful banana plant falls into the family of grasses?  Its trunk is really just the tightly wound stems of the banana leaves.

The fruit of the banana is delicious, nutritious and easy to grow.  They love lots of water, so you need to make sure you give them the right conditions.

With water restrictions, the following method is a great way to grow bananas and use your waste water too. 

Best of all – its absolutely free!

Step 1

Decide on the best place for your banana circle.  The circle will be about 2 meters in diameter and will require a lot of water.  Banana circles make great overflows for rainwater tanks, washing machine output, or any other waste grey-water that doesn’t contain harsh chemicals.

Step 2

Dig a large hole 2 meters in diameter and approximately 80cm deep.  Place the hole contents around the perimeter of the hole.  On section, you will end up with something like this:

Step 3

Find some bananas!  You might decide to buy some, but there are so many places where you can find free banana suckers.  Some people have groves of them in their backyards.  Why not ask them if they would mind you taking some?  There are many vacant lots where they grow also… take a look around!
Banana suckers come in two types, the ones that are easy to pull up, and the ones that aren’t.  Don’t give yourself a backache – pull up the ones that come out easily.  You are looking for the small ones about 50cm in height.  You will need 7.  Don’t be worried about pulling them out without soil around them.  They are very hardy and will take to their new surroundings easily.

Step 4

Evenly distribute your suckers around the perimeter of the hole and plant them into the mound of soil you have created.  Water them in well

Step 5

Fill the hole with mulch, kitchen scraps, any vegetation you can find.  Mulch really well around the bananas too, so that in the end you can’t see a difference between the raised mound where the bananas are planted, and the hole.  Keep plenty of mulch in the hole always.

Step 6

Empty as much water into the hole as you can.  The bananas will suck it up and grow according to how much they get!  Put all your kitchen scraps, garden vegetation etc into the banana circle.  They use it as fertiliser.

Step 7

Each banana plant will give you one bunch of bananas.  It will never fruit again, so cut it down at the base, mulch all of it up, and feed it back into the hole.  Each banana will throw suckers as it is growing.  Cut them all off until it has fruited.

Once it has fruited, allow one sucker per plant to grow.  Decide which direction around the perimeter you want your bananas to grow (it doesn’t matter which way you go, but be consistent with all the plants) and allow one sucker per tree to grow.

Step 8

When your banana bears fruit, leave the bell on the plant and pick the bananas as you need them.  Put the green bananas in a brown paper bag with an onion.  This will ripen them.  If you take the bell off, they will all ripen at the same time and you may have more than you can handle!

We hope you enjoy building your banana circle, gazing at wonder in the beautiful trees they become, and most of all eating the fruits of your labour… they really do taste all the more delicious!