GROWING YOUR OWN BANANA TREE IN YOUR HOME GARDEN

The bunch seems to be diminutive and the fruit shriveled – reason I forgot to cut the flower as and when my mother told me to.




Growing a good yielding banana tree is very easy if you know how to go about it…
Here are some tips from my farmer uncles.

1. Dig a pit 1 ½ to 2 feet deep – the pit has to be really deep - otherwise the tree is not sufficiently anchored to bear the weight of the heavy fruit.
2. Leave the pit open for a couple of days. Let it have a good sun bath.
3. Select a healthy sucker – one that has a well developed rhizome.
4. Plant the sucker. Half fill the pit with well rotted manure (FYM – Farm Yard Manure or cow dung), leaf manure or wood ash. Fill the other half with the soil you dug out of the pit. Any soil left is banked around the tree.
5. A ridge is dug around about 2 feet away from the tree and the soil thus removed can be kept on the side of the ridge away from the tree – to be used for further banking the tree when it bears fruit.
6. The plant has to be watered on alternate days.
7. You can apply more Farm Yard Manure after 6 months and again after 8 months.
8. Bank the tree some more after each application of manure.
9. Now your tree should yield fruit in about 10 months.
10. Once the bunch has formed and the flowers start falling without more bananas forming, the flower has to be removed – this ensures bigger fruit and fuller bunches.
11. You get only one harvest from each banana plant. After the bunch is harvested , cut down the tree leaving a stump about 1 feet from the ground.
12. The tender stem in the middle layer of the trunk is used in cooking.






Note:
1. Frequently harvesting leaves from the tree means poor flowering and fruit setting.
2. If you must harvest leaves, then do it from only one of the daughter plants that shoot up around the mother plant letting the others grow unhampered.
3. Don’t let more than 3 daughter plants (tillers) – the growth of the main plant will be quicker and healthier. One of these can be the new mother plant after the mother plant is harvested.
4. The tree might start leaning to one side with the weight of the fruit. Bank the base of the tree with some more soil and support the fruit with a sturdy stick.

This particular tree took about 20 months to bear fruit. This is my first banana tree. I am hoping to do better next time.

BANANA TREE UPDATE

Here's the update on my banana tree.

I had to support the tree with a stochy stick - else with the bananas growing in size and number the tree would have fallen down. The monsoon rains wash away the soil bund at the base.



The bananas have started showing. A few more weeks and they'll be reripen enough to eat.

CROCHET SWEATER IN AFGHAN STITCH

My brother and his family are down here from Seattle. My sister-in -law got me some wool in soft pastels and pink. I decided to use the pink to make a sweater for their daughter.

Here's back side of the sweater. I put the fastening at the back.



The sweater begins at the front yoke. I worked the yoke in afghan stitch.



- for the body I worked 1 dc and 1 tr into each stitch skipping every 3rd stitch in the 1st round. 1 dc, 1 tr into each sc in the subsequent rounds.

You'll notice a differnce in pattern here and there - I just forgot to turn work and work in the opposite direction.

It was interesting the difference that made!

And finally for some embellishment - in brazillian style embroidery.

MOTIF # 16 - ANOTHER BEADED BOOKMARK

Here is another beaded bookmark. My foray into tatting with beads is inspired by
Teri. Her work as you can see is awe inspiring.

I've always wondered how to get beads into rings - we usually see beads in picots.

I tried and the result is what you see here.

I got a few beads into the ring. I realised after sliding the beads from the ring thread close to the ds that a length of shuttle thread was bare. So I slid in the same number of beads from the shuttle thread before making the next ds.

Looking at the bookmark now, I wonder if maybe I should have used 1 bead less for the inner ring formed by the shuttle thread.



The pattern itself is very simple - just the basic rings and chains.



I have written down the instructions for working the basic ring and chain with beads - the rest, I am yet to write down.

Ring: 12 beads in ring thread and 12 beads in the shuttle thread.
[1ds, slide 3 beads from the ring thread and 3 beads from the shuttle thread close to the ds, 1ds, p] 3 times, 1 ds. slide 3 beads each from the ring and the shuttle threads close to the ds, p 1ds, close ring, rw - the extra p at the end is to join the chain to the base of the ring when working chains on the other side of the rings.

Chain: 8 beads each in ball and shuttle threads. * 1 ds slide 4 beads each from ball and shuttle threads close to the ds, 1 ds, * p, rep from * to * rw.

BEAD COUNT:
- for 1 ring - 24 beads - 12 in the ring thread and 12 in the shuttle thread.
- for 1 chain - 16 beads - 8 in the ball thread and 8 in the shuttle thread.

Criical comments on this pattern, and any pointing out of mistakes will be appreciated.

MOODY BLUES

A couple of years of blogging, a few posts some good and some not so good - where am I today? Still trying to find out WHO, WHAT AND WHERE I am.

I am, wife, mom, an avid(addicted?) reader, an enthusiastic gardener, a moody cook and homemaker, a sporodic needlewoman, an even more sporodic seamtress, a good friend, a dedicated teacher I was even a good content writer - My loved ones delight in telling people that I am "A JACK OF ALL TRADES AND MASTER OF NONE" - I drive my own car, fix my own lightblubs, cement, varnish, solder, wind the fuse wire and know my way around the hammer, spanners and screwdrivers. So why the sudden blues?

While I loved teaching in a school, I did not like the rest of the baggage that comes with working in an institution - the internal politics. I loved writing but I did not like working for someone who did not know anything about the topics I was writing about and could not appreciate the amount of time and effort that went into it - so here I am exactly where I started - Jack of all trades master of none - and I am fed up of well-meaning people telling me I am wasting my talents.

Looks like I am in desperate need of mental spring-cleaning...

MOTIF 15

Motif 15 was supposed to be a earring. Somewhere along the line it evolved into a flower and finally a book mark.




I made it a point this time to write down instructions as I went along.

I worked this motif with 2 shuttles using CTM.

50 beads (36 for the pattern + how many ever for the tail) in SHUTTLE 1.
36 beads (22 for the pattern + how many ever for the tail) in SHUTTLE 2.

RING 1: With SHUTTLE 1 form a ring sliding 3 beads in the ring thread (5ds, slide in a bead and make a picot) 3 times, 5ds close ring. Slide a bead close to the base of the ring just formed.

RING 2: With SHUTTLE 1 form a ring sliding 2 beads in the ring thread 5ds, join to the 3rd picot of the prev. ring, (5ds, 1 picot with a bead in it) 2 times, 5ds close ring. Slide a bead close to the base of the ring just formed.

RINGS 3-5: SAME AS RING 2

RING 6: is a split ring and also the 1st split ring in this design.

SR1 - With SHUTTLE 1, 5ds join to the 3rd picot of Ring 5. 5ds/ SHUTTLE 2 - slide 1 bead close to the base of Ring 1, 5ds, join to the 1st picot of Ring 1, 5ds, close ring.

SR2: With SHUTTLE 1, Slide 6 beads close to the base of SR1. Form a ring sliding 1 bead in the ring thread, 5ds, picot with a bead in it, 5ds / With SHUTTLE 2 Slide 6 beads close to the base of SR1, 5ds picot with a bead in it 5ds, close ring.

SR 3-9: Same as SR2 - slide just 1 bead close to the base of the prev SR instead of 6.

Slide all the remaining beads close to the last SR cut and tie.

NOTE: For each extra SR with beads you need 2 extra beads on each Shuttle. While you should have a bead in the ring thread for the first half of the SR, the bead remains in the shuttle thread itsel for the second half.

MY BANANA TREE

MY banana tree has finally decided to reward me for my efforts. After 1 year and 8 months of work and patience or should I say gestation, the tree is finally bearing fruit - literally.

I am battling not just against bad soil but also against pests and bandicoots that take pleasure in eating up all my leaves and uprooting my plants. So here's some of what is left of all that destruction - My Hibiscus collection.