Now I know that I have probably driven you all a little mad with these bananas, and I hesitate to bring them to your attention again. But I just can't help myself. Because the bananas, the ones on the banana cam page, the ones that I went batty over and blogged about non-stop for days when they emerged, yes those bananas, are Still Not Ripe.
I'm not entirely sure what they are waiting for.
Now I have learnt my lesson. I picked the fig too early, ruined it. I cut off the last hand of this banana bunch too early, ruined it. I have ruined several rockmelons in the past in exactly the same manner and I once picked a capsicum that was the size of a small chilli because I actually it was a chilli.
Oh yes, it was a long and hard road, but lesson learnt. I am not touching these babies until they are yellow. They can sit up there for the next ten months and I'll not touch them.
In a game of Western style shoot out, I'm waiting for the bananas to draw first.
19 comments:
Pardon my banana ignorance, but....cant you pick a couple and see if they ripen inside...I am sure that the banana growers pick them green...?
That photo of them sure is nice too....surely one missing, wouldnt matter? Just to see...?
Go on...
You are bad Suzanne. BAD. I did chop some green ones off just before we went on holiday and they went from green to black :( Since then I have been told by those who are in the banana know, to wait for at least one banana to go completely yellow, and then you can pick the bunch.
I'm not budging until the bananas do.
Ali i dont blame you and with the price of Banana's now $10 a kilo id wait for them to ripen yum!!
A quick Google search of "home grown banana ripening" indicates that waiting for the bananas to turn yellow on the plant is not a good idea. It has been stated that if left on the tree, they will often split, and the texture will degrade. These aren't the only fruits that can't/shouldn't be ripened on the tree. Pears and avocados are always picked full sized but green. The pears get gritty and the avocados simply rot, if left on their trees to ripen.
As I said on my own blog recently, Patience is a primary requirement for a gardener. You can see where the expression "driving me Bananas" comes from now... Did you ever show us exactly what did happen to the first hand of bananas you harvested? I remember that you were worried that they were going soft at one end, but what happened after that? Did they never ripen properly?
Ali, we have lots of bananas and what we do is take the whole hand off the tree when it looks pretty much like yours does now. We leave them on the deck and they ripen. They've never ripened properly on the tree - but you can cover them with a plastic bag or something?! My DH says it's something to do with ethylene!
I agree with you Mark, patience is of primary importance. I really only started to garden with intent in June of last year, and while I go on about my recent green thumb I realise that it's just time. Some things, like the capsicum, have taken all this time to fruit.
Amazering.
Now, the bunch I cut down. I cut them down on the 6th of Feb, by the 17th they were going wrinkly, but not yellow. Then on the 19th we went on holiday, which is why you didn't get a blow by blow account of their progress. I can't work out if that is good or bad timing :D. The lass who housesat for us said they then just went black, and when we got home they were awful. I was too sad to take photos of non ripe bananas.
Hbierlich, thanks for googling for me :) I think I have been told to let just one turn/start to yellow on the plant, and then you can cut it down. Because yes, if you let the whole bunch ripen on the plant then turn yuck o. But not even ONE of mine is showing signs of a patch of yellow!
Frugal mumma, they aren't expensive here yet, I've still been buying them for around $3/kilo at the markets. They may be local farms that weren't affected by all the rain maybe.
Laura, right, that's it, you've convinced me, I'm taking off another hand.
I could never hold my own in a Western!
Thank you :)
Our local markets have them cheap but the big two have them expensive. Tomatoes are too.
I bet the growers pick them green and then spray them with something to make them ripen!
Hazel I think they gas them... poor bananas. ALthough it could be happy gas for all I know.
Elsie May, I am lucky to have a regular banana person whose prices don't budge much. I just can't wait until I am my regular person!
Yep, go on Ali... take em down .... a hand, that is.
You won't know for next time if you don't.
Well, I was thinking of cutting just one. What do you think? I'd have cut it down already but it's pouring outside.
Yours are older than mine and a hand from mine ripened in a plastic bag with a ripe banana and an apple in the pantry... but then the hands in the fruit bowl ripened at the same pace lol.
I think it is safe to do a hand for sure, I'm going to cut down the second bunch (which is about a week younger than my first and two weeks younger than yours)and hang it in the laundry... if it stops raining!
Donna that is most absolutely fabulous news! So none were ripe on the plant when you cut them down?? I was just thinking of Scarlett's bunch, the one with the one ripe banana. She said that was the point to pick them at.
I don't want to kill more bananas!
Ye godz, $3 a kilo! Where? Where? Even Aldi had them at $10 a kilo a few days ago - I think that is daze ago! When we didn't have bananas at affordable prices just after Cyclon Larry, we stopped eating them then found a market seller with fruit from northern NSW at $3 a kilo. Queue at 5am and get your 2 kilos ration. Better'n none. We don't go to markets now so don't know what's happening there.
Ripening Fruit: different fruit need different treatment. Avocados do not ripen on the tree, ever. That's why they are picked when hard as rocks and that's why they ripen at home coz that is the way Avocados work.
Most fruit is picked when hard for transport to market but it has to be picked at a state of maturity which enables the fruit to ripen. The growers don't always get it right, either.
The gas which ripens fruit - any fruit, any vegetable for that matter - is naturally-occurring and given off by ripening plant material - is Ethylene. That is what the fruit merchants use to ripen Bananas - and that is why fruit will ripen in a bag with or without a Banana to help. Bananas just give off more Ethylene than any other fruit.
When I grew them, they were the old-fashioned Lady Finger-type Bananas, just got a stool from someone local, not legal but everyone did it then. I don't know about the ripening tendencies of the modern tissue-culture Banana varieties. But with mine, I left the bunch on until the first Flying Fox (Fruit Bat) took a chomp then I cut down the bunch. FFs are the experts on ripe fruit.
Meantime Ali, as you suggest, cut off a hand and see how it goes. Put half in a paper bag (not plastic! they sweat) and half out and await developments. Green Bananas can be cooked and you could at least do that in desperation I guess. In general, the Cavendish-type cook sweet and drier than the Lady-Finger-types.
Remember that fruit and vegetables are living beings and breathe so putting them into ordinary plastic bags speeds their deterioration. The only 'plastic' bags I know of which help to preserve fruit and veges are the Peak Fresh bags available direct from PF.
Ooo Elaine I went and lashed out - cut one off. Not one hand, one finger. It is rock hard and fat as a hippo, really fat actually. I've never seen one quite like it, bigger, certainly, but never fatter than this.
I lied when I said I had one source for bananas, I actually have two. One is on the Gold Coast, a man on the side of the road around 6km out of Mudgeeraba towards Springbrook. My parents live around 500m from where he sets up camp, which is how I know of him. He sells bananas, honey and various jams. Honey is $5/kg, and the bananas are $3, although he may have gone up to $3.50, I vaguely remember my father saying something.
The other source is the markets here in Mitchelton, the Power's Markets on the first Sunday of the month. There are a few banana people but I always go to the same ones as they have pink bananas (or is it red?), sugar bananas, and of course ladyfingers and cavendish. Their ladyfingers or the sugar ones, I can't remember which, are selling at $3/kg, or they were last markets. Funnily enough I have a photo of their price board, I was going to include it in a post once but decided against it.
I keep forgetting to ask her where her farm is, she's a lovely lady and always gives the children bananas for free, and of course anyone who is lovely to my children gets my vote :)
Lots of bats around here, none chomping. I'll let you know how they go!
The peak fresh bags don't work with bananas... or certainly not sitting in the insulated container in a sytrafoam box. The whole lot rotted within a week and there was a lot of moisture inside the bag - 14kg of bananas gone as compost, won't try that again!
Oh Donna... did you have to go off and throw a little tantie at that one? I think I would have cried :(
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