Can you believe it?

I can say with pure confidence that before I started growing bananas that I simply thought that bananas grow on trees like many other fruits.

Did you know they weren't actually trees?

Crazy! But a "banana tree" is actually a large herbaceous plant that belongs to the genus Musa. It's classified as an herb and not a tree.

The plant grows bananas from an underground rhizome and has a pseudostem which is not wood. The trunk is actually tightly packed leaf bases.

Something else that many including myself didn't know but once the "tree" produces the bananas, it will not grow a secondary set of fruit like trees will.

The main stem of the plant will eventually die back and you can remove the plant itself.

The good news is the plant does produce new shoots or "pups" from the base.

Personally, we planted one blue java banana "tree" 1.5 years ago and we now have 6 banana "trees" from that one that we planted. The main plant produced 5 new pups.

Here are some tips on banana plants!

Many believe that you should remove a few of the pups to allow for more space for the banana plants to grow. Also, to ensure the pups have the right amount of nutrients instead of fighting over the nutrients in the soil, it might be good to remove a few. And it might help so the new pups can benefit from the main plant redirecting the energy to the few remaining to grow better!

We hope this was helpful! We also want to point out that our website has different supplies for the garden, educational resources for homesteading, and much more so feel free to take a look and get what you need!

Follow us @the.baker.family.homestead for a journey through organic gardening, sourdough baking, recipes, canning, and more!
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