Growing Bananas

Bananas are the world's favourite tropical fruit. The fruits are rich in fibre, potassium, vitamins A, B6 and C. But it's also about flavour - and you just can't beat the taste of a home grown banana.

Bananas have been cultivated for so long that they have lost the ability to reproduce by seed. They need gardeners to survive. They are propagated either by division or by tissue culture, and that means they are all genetically identical clones. They're not true trees, in fact the stems are made from layers of tightly-packed leaf-bases, and each new leaf is forced through the centre of the stem. At maturity they flower and the first part of the flower to open is male - that’s called the bell. Then the spirally arranged female flowers come out and develop into fruit.

Anyone can grow backyard bananas, but banana-growing in Australia is highly regulated and a permit is needed to plant or transplant a banana. There's a good reason for this. Banana plants are susceptible to serious diseases and plants can only be bought from government approved, certified disease free sources.