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The Saga of the Unruly Banana

The other day I noticed a small green leaf on my window sash. I thought it was just a piece of banana leaf torn off during a thunderstorm, but it didn't dry up and die, it got BIGGER!


Upon further inspection, it turns out that a pup from one of the large banana plant had grown up between the siding and the concrete block wall. YIKES!

I had to do something about it, so I looked at the situation, and found I would have to take out it's mother plant to get it out of there. Not a problem. I was thinking of taking the bananas out anyway.

After taking out the basket hanger and moving a lot of containers to clear the way for it to fall, I pulled it out of the ground by
LITERALLY hanging on it until it pulled itself out of the ground. Then I chopped the roots still holding it, chopped the baby away from it, and guided it to fall in the empty space I'd created.

My courtyard is 11 ft. wide, and it was equally as tall, so I angled it so it didn't take out my tomatoes. 

Banana Corm Pieces
Once it was out, I went in and dug around the pup and tried to figure out how to get it out. My first chore was to cut through the trunk to separate the corm from the top, so the top would die. That wasn't much fun, since the trunk was right up against the concrete wall, and I didn't want to damage my saw. I finally managed to do that, then I had to figure out how to get the corm out. I ended up chopping it up and pulling it out one piece at a time. (pic #2- pieces)

So now I had a very large hole and had taken out one of the only things creating any shade in that area. If you've read my blog, you'll know that my courtyard has very little shade, so I'm always trying to create it with something. The bananas were pretty good for that, but now one is gone, so I'll have to bring some plants indoors until I can create more shade. 

Mother Plant in Two Pieces
I also had a very large banana plant that needed to be chopped up and disposed of. By the way, if anybody tells you that a large banana trunk is easy to saw through, they're lying.

I had to cut away the dead leaves before I could even start to saw it into pieces. At first, I cut the bottom half to about four feet, planning to plant it elsewhere. HA! The joke was on me! Just so you'll know, a four-foot section of mature banana with the corm is heavy as hell! 

So, since that wasn't happening, I set about cutting the entire thing into smaller sections that I'll turn into compost. That took  a lot longer than I expected it too, and made me realize I really need a power jigsaw.

Mess in the Yard
This morning, I topped the other large banana in an attempt to create some shade for that area with the leaves that will come out lower to the ground. In the end, I had a pile of leaves and trunk logs along with a big banana top making a mess in the courtyard. (Yes, that's a pencil cactus in the background).



Banana is Planted Here
I wasn't up to any more sawing, so I planted the other corm out in the front yard next to the fence between my and my neighbor's yard. It will probably annoy the neighbors, but TOUGH! There are baby taro plants behind it, and I may need to move those to I can harvest them this winter. 

I'm not quite done yet, but that's it for today. I'm not sure if I should take the other big banana out, or just keep an eye on any pups it sends out so I don't have that problem again. It probably won't get bananas this year, and may die back anyway, so I'm going to just wait and see for now.

At any rate, it's 11 a.m. and I haven't had breakfast yet, so I'm off to cook up some bacon and eggs. 


Happy Gardening!

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