How to manage your banana plants in the Agroforestry Way - FOOD FOREST PRACTICES

What's up YouTube? Welcome to the Agroforestry Academy channel. Today I'm going to talk a bit about banana plants. You know this is one of our most precious plants because it produces amazing fruit and amazing organic material and it grows really fast so it's really one of our favorite plants to have in our agroforestry systems. So how to manage them? You know how do you maintain their health and productivity? Let's talk a bit about that. So the first thing you need to know is that banana plants they grow in families. So a banana plant family is all of the plants that sprouted from the same original plant. So you know when you plant one banana plant and with the one I planted was this one this is the original plant but once it bears fruit it doesn't grow anymore so it's taken down and but in the process of growing it's going to produce pups. So you know it had a pup here, it had a pup over there, it had a pup over here and then these second generation banana plants produce the third generation banana plants which are the ones I have now. And now I'm in a moment where I have to thin some of them out because I can't feed seven babies in the same household. I really need to allow them for some more space and some more room and some more water and nutrients. So what I'm going to do is I need to choose which ones I'm going to leave and which ones I'm going to chop down and produce the amazing organic matter that banana gives us. Check it out this is all precious gold people. So a lot of stuff happens underneath the banana trunk. So now we come to the question how do you choose which banana plants you're going to leave which ones you're going to take down. That's a tough question but luckily we've got some things we can look for. So there are four main things I want to talk to you about. First one, number of leaves. How many leaves can your banana plant maintain? This is an important thing for assessing the plant's health. So let's take a look at this plant over here. It's got, I'm not counting this one because this one is pretty much dead, it's got one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen and it's releasing the fourteen leaf over there. Now this is a pretty good sign because the banana plant should be able to maintain at least 12 green leaves. Now obviously when the banana is really young it won't have that amount of leaves but what you need to look into is does it release new leaves and drops the old ones? Do the old ones die or is it able to produce new leaves until it reaches 12, 13, 14, ideally 16 green leaves is what the banana plant should have. So this is the first thing you need to look for. Second thing, that's about the leaves as well, the distance between them. So, oh there's a dragonfly on my, okay I killed it. So let's go back, the distance between the leaves, that's the second thing you can look for. Now distance between leaves vary from a banana plant variety to the other. So you need to compare that distance in between the same variety, that's important, an important thing to notice. But inside the same variety of plant, the healthier the banana plant is, the more well-fed it is, the greater the distance will be. So you know for this banana plant, this specific type which is what we call here in Brazil prata, that's banana prata, this is a pretty decent distance between the leaves. So that's the second thing you want to look for. When you see a banana plant which got the leaves really, really close together and they're all concentrated on the top of the plant, you can be sure that that's not going to give you good fruit. So now third thing we're going to look into, we need to look on the soil. Now you want your banana plants to be coming from inside the soil and not from the base of the trunk of its mother. So this is a very, very important thing because what happens is that as a banana family grows old, if you don't manage it properly, what happens is that the new pups, they start sprouting closer and closer to the soil. So the closer they are to the soil, the less firmness they have to sustain weight because they don't take enough root, they're not deep enough to sustain the weight of the pack of bananas that they're going to bear. So you really need to choose banana plants that are coming from underneath the soil and you see them coming out from inside the soil because that means that they're sprouting from the rhizome of their mothers, but from the part of the rhizome that's underneath the soil and not the one that's close to the soil. So that's really important. You can see the bananas, they're really, really firm because they come from inside the soil. Now this one over here, you can see it's a bit closer to the surface. It moves. Actually, I'm going to take this one out because this is not going to be able to bear a good enough pack of bananas. So it makes no sense for me to leave it. I can take it out and plant it somewhere else. So that was the third thing you need to consider. Now the fourth one has nothing to do with the banana plant itself, but with your system because you want banana plants to be aligned because the banana is a plant that moves as it grows old because you plant it somewhere and as it releases pups, it starts spreading around. So this banana family specifically, this one I showed you, the present bananas, they're already at least 20 centimeters from their original spot. This one here is already 40, almost 50 centimeters farther out. Now I've got other plants here in the system. I've got these pineapples, I've got some cashew plants over here, and I want to maintain each and their rightful spot. So for example, these ones that are just really, really close to the pineapple plants, I'm going to take them out because I don't want them clogging too much the space. So these are the things you need to consider when managing your banana plants. Make sure you use all the material that you chop down because it's an amazing material and do not be afraid to chop down your banana plants. They absolutely love it and the more you do it, the more they're going to get healthy, the more bananas you're going to have. So now let's chop some of these babies down. So as you can see now, I've got a lot less shade here in this area and I'm still going to work on the other families that are here in the same spot. But you know, from eight plants, now I'm down to three close to the same, in the same family. I might still choose to leave only two. And now I've got enough sunlight for my pineapple. I've got lots of organic material on the soil, which is good for me. It's good for banana plants. It's good for the cashew trees behind me. So that's it. I hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you leave your thumbs up if you enjoyed this video. I hope it was helpful for you. And if you've got any comments, please share it with us and you know, share this video in our channel with your friends. If you think they might enjoy it and benefit from seeing our videos. So thank you for watching. This is Felipe from the Agroforestry Academy and I'm signing out. And always remember, keep it pruned.