Experts say that this grass, often called jungle weed, is not difficult to grow at home – the most important thing is warmth and light. However, in the homes of most Lithuanians, banana trees usually lack one thing or another, so they don’t even bloom.
Rita Vaičiulenienė says that she had no plans to grow a banana until she received it as a gift about ten years ago. From an acquaintance who worked in a shop on Vilniaus street, in whose windows Panevėžys saw bananas ripening more than once. The current pet of Mrs. Rita is already the third generation of the donor.
Because the banana tree is a herbaceous plant: after producing fruit, the stem dies after releasing new shoots. “It takes a good four years before we get new fruits,” says the Berčiūni woman. According to R. Vaičiulenienė, her son once noticed the very first clustered inflorescence of a banana on Christmas Eve.
“Everyone had a surprise – a holy Christmas gift,” smiles the hostess. It takes almost half a year or more for bananas to ripen into fruit suitable for eating at the place of blossoms, so the family tasted the first bananas only in July-August of the following year. That time the harvest was plentiful. The second time, less fruit grew.
And this year, R. Vaičiulenienė calls the harvest miraculous – the banana produced about 30-40 fruits. Some of them are already yellow, others will still need to ripen. But I decided not to taste it, because I want as many family friends as possible to see the rare beauty.
No worse than in the conservatory
Home-grown bananas taste different from store-bought ones. “Homemade bananas are very sweet, very fragrant,” says R. Vaičiulenienė. She says that she saw bananas grown in Kretinga’s winter garden on television. “I don’t want to brag, but as far as you can see, my bunch of bananas is no worse,” says my girlfriend. – And in the conservatory, it’s heaven for that banana!” Caring for the plant is not difficult. A pot is quite enough for him. The family buys the substrate at the supermarket and mixes in some rural black soil.
R. Vaičiulenienė says she does not use any fertilizers. “I touch the water and they grow happy,” she laughs.
Although not in the conservatory, the banana is placed in a sunny and warm place in the Berčiūniškis’ house. As Mrs. Rita says, “grasses” more than two meters high cannot be taken outside. It is said that the plant likes moisture the most. This summer, during the heat, we had to drink 6 liters of water every day. “You wake up in the morning and it’s as if nothing happened,” he says. “Now there are two huge bananas in one cup and there is a third baby.” We are thinking about how to save them.”
R. Vaičiulėnienė says that after the first harvest, the banana produced one shoot, and the second time – three. This time, the family planted one again for themselves, and gave the other two to friends. As far as she knows, none have succeeded in breeding. According to Berčiūniškė, the most difficult thing is to transplant the plant.
“We spend an hour or an hour and a half until we are able to distinguish what is unnecessary and what needs to be planted,” he shares his experience. With the third plant, the woman says she got into a curious situation. About a couple of years ago, the current banana started to sprout. The family did not destroy it – it allowed it to grow. “It’s now two huge bananas in one cup and there’s a third baby.” We are thinking about how to save them,” says R. Vaičiulenienė.
The most important thing is the growth conditions
Renata Čanovienė, the curator of the conservatory of the Vytautas Magnus University Botanical Garden in Kaunas, however, says that she notices that bananas are becoming more popular in Lithuania.
Traveling Lithuanians want to bring home something interesting. Those who have the opportunity bring the plant from abroad themselves. Banana seedlings can also be purchased in nurseries or supermarkets. That is why many people are tempted to grow them. Unfortunately, one gets disappointed quite quickly with such a purchase – it is not possible to grow fruit. R. Čanovienė advises those who want to try homemade bananas to provide the plant with a warm and sunny place. There should be no draft.
“There must be a lot of light and heat all the time, because the banana loves it. The place should be very sunny, but protected from direct sunlight so as not to bake. And you don’t need anything special,” the specialist emphasizes that suitable conditions are more important for exotic pets – the care itself is very simple. According to R. Čanoviene, bananas at home usually lack light, so only Lithuanians who have large windows, warm verandas or even private conservatories can successfully grow the fruit.
“But bananas can be grown under other conditions,” assures the curator of the Botanical Garden conservatory. Let’s say, in a cooler home environment, the plant will develop, it will be beautiful, but the fruits will not ripen.
R. Čanovienė confirms: the banana blooms and bears fruit only once in its life. “This is a herbaceous plant. It’s not the plant itself that dies, but the so-called pseudostem, but it grows new ones from the root shoots,” she explains. Then, depending on the growing conditions and variety, after a year, two, three or even more, the banana blooms again.
Bananas are already growing outside
True bananas, which are natural hybrids of the small common banana, grow in the conservatory of the Botanical Garden and bear fruit after three years. According to R. Čanoviene, what people buy in nurseries are usually various varieties of small bananas, so they can bear fruit sooner or later. In the Kaunas conservatory, the small bananas are grown in a darker environment, so they just stood there without changing for a while.
“Now it is growing in a brighter place, and this is the first time we got fruits,” says the curator, saying that everything depends on the growing conditions. For several years now, several cold-resistant banana varieties have been growing outdoors in the VDU Botanical Garden. They are planted on the south side along the conservatory and overwinter perfectly. They are mulched and abundantly watered in the summer, and covered with a 30 cm layer of peat in the winter. All garden-grown bananas freeze in winter, but re-sprout from underground stems in late spring. Therefore, after frost, a layer of peat is poured so that the plant does not dry out and die.
According to R. Čanoviene, bananas can grow outdoors in a sunny open place, but it is better if there is a hedge or something similar nearby that provides shelter. “It will grow in a windy place, but the wind tears the leaves a lot. They become undecorative,” she says.
According to the curator of the orangery, it is a practice in larger botanical gardens that the aerial part of bananas left outside during the winter is cut off and the roots are covered to prevent them from getting cold. Another option is to cover the whole plant – it is already very expensive. However, although bananas of certain resistant varieties are already wintering in Lithuania, they do not produce fruit. The reason is simple – the plant blooms and ripens its fruits for a long time, and summers in Lithuania are short.
“We need a rather long warm period, which we don’t have, so there won’t be any fruit outside,” assures R. Čanovienė.
We usually call the banana fruit a banana, but botanists call it a berry. It is believed that the banana genus, named Musa in Latin, was named after the Greek botanist Antonius Musa, who was a physician to the Roman emperor. Plants of the banana genus are distributed from Malaysia, Sri Lanka, eastern India, southern China and Southeast Asia to the Pacific Southwest and northern Australia. The genus consists of more than 50 species, some of which have many subspecies. The plants of this genus are called jungle weeds because they usually conquer damaged vegetation – eroded hillsides, forest clearings and cavities. Such spontaneous habitat changes are an integral part of the dynamics of tropical forest vegetation, creating niches for banana plants to grow.
2023-10-18 16:11:12
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