Tropical Permaculture in Cold Climates

Why YOU should grow bananas

A significant chunk of my permaculture education took place in the tropics, a climate about as different as you can get from the icy Northeastern U.S., where I live now. While the concepts remain the same, the specifics are entirely different.

However! There are a few extremely useful tricks that I’m going to try to adapt to my homestead in Zone 5b, and today I’m going to talk about one of my favorites: bananas. Or rather, banana trees.

The most widely grown cold hardy banana is Musa basjoo—usually known as just “hardy banana” or “Japanese banana,” despite originating in Sichuan, China. Musa basjoo is hardy down to -10°F—if mulched heavily in the winter—and it’s grown by people all over the East Coast, mostly to provide ambience next to swimming pools.

Musa basjoo has one significant downside: while the fruit isn’t exactly inedible—it’s not going to hurt you—it’s hardly worth eating. I’ve heard it described as flavorless, stringy, and seedy. It doesn’t even fruit reliably in cold climates, and when it does, the bananas are (adorably) tiny, by banana standards.

Its uselessness as a fruit crop, though, doesn’t mean Musa basjoo isn’t worth growing or eating(!) In fact, as the image at the top of this post suggests, bananas can be extremely useful to the permaculturist, fruit or no.

First, let’s talk about what you can eat on Musa basjoo. Like all banana trees, it contains an edible core within its pseudostem (so-called because the trunk of a banana tree is composed of tightly packed overlapping leaf sheaths.) This core is used in cooking throughout the tropical world but is virtually unknown elsewhere.

The core can be eaten raw, although I suggest cutting it finely and soaking it in salt water with lemon juice to soften the tough fibers. Treated in this manner, it makes a very pleasant celery-like snack. More commonly though, it is cooked into curries and stir fries, where it makes an excellent and hearty vegetable addition.

Banana flowers, which Musa basjoo produce unreliably in cold climates, is prepared similarly and is also delicious.

To me, the tasty and useful core alone makes Musa basjoo worth growing. A Musa basjoo tree can grow up to 18 feet in a single year, get chopped down, and do it all over again the next year. That’s a lot of banana core, probably more than you can eat. Anytime I can grow something that cranks out food without a ton of maintenance, I’m game.

But we’re just scratching the surface, here.

Banana trees also produce dozens of glossy leaves each year, and Musa basjoo’s can be large, up to 2’ x 6’. Each of those leaves represents 5-10 single-use plates, which can be thrown directly into the compost pile after eating. That’s a dish you don’t have to wash, AND it turns into high-quality compost. Plus, it looks cool. Tremendous resource in my book.

On top of that, banana leaves can be used to wrap food for steaming or transportation, both of which they do exceedingly well.

Now, in a hospitable setting, bananas will spread via underground corms, producing dense thickets of trees. If you plant Musa basjoo in full sun and give it plenty of water and nutrients, you’ll quickly wind up with more trees than you need for curries and disposable plates.

So, what else can you do with them? A lot. Banana trees are packed full of water; in fact, they’re 93% water, most of it contained in large, fibrous cells. But it’s not just water in there. It’s water filled with nutrients the tree is storing to fuel its incredibly rapid growth. This makes them remarkably useful as temporary self-watering planters.

As depicted above, you can punch holes in them and plant directly into the stalks, which has the benefit of preserving most of the water and the structure of the tree. These will last roughly one growing season, depending on conditions.

Alternatively, you can cut them into individual pots, which makes them easier to move but much quicker to dry up and break down.

Another option is to plant directly into a living tree! This has the benefit of being truly self-watering, since the tree will continue taking up water even after its had holes punched into its side.

There’s another use for the water-filled stalks along similar lines: rooting cuttings. Just lay down a freshly cut stalk, punch some holes in it with a chopstick, and shove in your cuttings (with rooting hormone, if necessary.) I’ve done this to create countless new Coleus plants, which root easily in wet environments. It’s pretty magical.

Last but not least, the entire banana plant makes outstanding mulch. As it breaks down—which happens fairly quickly—it releases all of its water and nutrients, effectively creating a short-lived self-watering, self-fertilizing bed.

There are other uses for banana trees, particularly their fibers, but those are beyond my personal experience. For most people, planters, plates, food, mulch, and beauty should be justification enough to plant a Musa basjoo or two.

If you’ve made it this far and you’re hungering for more banana content, check out one of my favorite seed sites on the planet, offering a host of unreal banana options and a great deal more. I don’t know how, but someday I’m determined to grow a Giant Highland Banana.

If you’d like to follow along as I try to establish my own Musa basjoo grove this summer, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram.

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—The Last Farm