Backyard Farming Forum
Bringing food production home

Hello

I thought it is about time to put some photos up about our garden.

For the start I would like to show off a picture of one of our banana plants, type ladyfinger. That is the first one which started flowering a couple days ago and I completely missed the start of it.

I am really looking forward to the harvest, I already have some banana bags sitting here to protect the fruits.

Cheers

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

Any tricks for growing nana's, Gwyd? How old is this particular plant?

I would say just under a year, I didn't expect it to flower as the plant is just over 2m to the to of the stem. Just started some weeks ago feeding it with the straw from the chicken coop. It had plenty of suckers (mostly sword type luckily, which are growing in our banana Stonehenge, picture follows tomorrow). I wanted to keep the feet off the plant dry so it is growing in a 4wd tyre, I thought if it works for melons, can't be wrong for bananas.... Wrong... It's a hard task to get the suckers cut off the main plant. Lots of native bees are circling the flowers on the end of the bananas, just a couple of millimetres long, completely black.

Cheers

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

This is the banana-stonehenge. On the outside are 6 banana plants (hopefully ladyfinger but i am not 100% sure) and 6 coconut palms alternately planted and another 3 ladyfinger banana plants in the center. There is some sort of drip irrigation covering the ground and a sprayer in center to cool the leafs down in the morning and evening. I hope when they are fully grown it will create a small micro climate to keep the humidity up when it goes into the dry season.

I could count over 50 bananas on the flower already, the third hand just emerged.

The second picture is one of my dogs, Nancy, i dont know whether she is keeping watch over the rabbits or watching out for one of the rabbits to escape... Looks a little bit like she is watching TV...

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

I know, i am lazy on the updates, but here is one...

The second banana flower came out, type ladyfinger as well, looks like to be about 40 to 50 fruits on this one.

The first flower is completely open now and i removed the tip to save the nutrients instead of wasting them on male flower buds which wont turn into fruits anyway and bagged the fruits with on of the reflective banana bags.

Now the waiting begins... 3 months... 6 months... not sure how long they need to ripen...

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

I really like it! Looks and sounds :-) great!

Thanks Perpetuitas

Where do you live in Meck-Pomm?

I am from Aachen/NRW, in Australia since 5 1/2 years.

Cheers

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

lots of passion fruit flowers but no fruit set...

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

How you going with that banana disease they have up there now? Trust you are not effected

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BackYard Farming
CcBear's Dunbyu Gardens

CcBear's Home Produce and Preserves


BackYard Aquaponics
CcBear's First System

I had the inspectors on my block and they took GPS marker of every sucker, but all the plants look healthy.

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

So, the first banana harvest is done (just above 3 months since the flower was fully opened), 3.5kg of ladyfinger bananas, very sweet and yummy. The second bunch should start to turn yellow any week now.

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

Good harvest, mine have only just thrown up suckers. How old were yours when the flower appearded?

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BackYard Farming
CcBear's Dunbyu Gardens

CcBear's Home Produce and Preserves


BackYard Aquaponics
CcBear's First System

I got them from a mate at work, I work there since 1.5 years and it wasn't right at the start, so I guess it took them a year. But I got some suckers of them which get fresh chicken sh*t every weekend and 2 of them are pretty close to producing a flower, so these are closer to 9 months from sucker to flower.

I only used sword sucker, they look at first like they are not very healthy because the leaf looks misformed, but they grow much quicker and get the first real leaf when they reach nearly a meeter in height.

On the banana plants in our "stone henge" I didn't cut off any suckers as yet but one of my mates wants some, so I guess I will do that shortly, but there is no shortage in nutrient.

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

We just went for a walk around the yard with the dogs and found 2 small passion fruit hanging on the vines. I hope there are some more. It's all happening.

Gardening is a complete new experience for me as I normally like to start a job and finish a job and am very impatient with things. But that also changes with some jobs like the solar and DC power setup for the house because it is just too expensive to finish right away. I calculated the power use to be $300 a year for the aquaponics, so I can't find the justification to fork out three grand to get it all finished, that needs to be spread over a couple of pay weeks. I think I can see some nodding heads by the people who read the post. ;-)

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken

By the way, planting the bananas in old tyres to keep their feet dry looked like good idea at first but one of them has a sucker growing outside the tyre and removing the plant which had fruit already was very hard...

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Gwydions first system

Gwydions chicken