You can plant Bananas in your garden to gain favors from their fruits, flowers, peels, and the spent parts.
Most Banana trees are grown commercially and are hybrids with sterile fruits and small seeds.
Go through the reasons why you should plant Bananas in your garden from the article below!
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Top Gardening Reasons to Plant Bananas In Your Garden
Most people don’t realize that Banana trees are not ‘trees.’
The sweet Banana fruits add a tropical vibe to your dessert, but their uses are not finite to just peeling and eating.
Let’s learn what happens if you plant Bananas in your garden.
1. Growing Banana Trees as Companions
You can grow Banana trees as companions with other plants such as Legumes, Palm Trees, Aromatic Herbs, Bird of Paradise, Ginger, Turmeric, etc.
Some advantages of growing Banana trees as companion plants are as follows.
- Banana trees provide overstory shade and support to some short plants and climbers.
- Growing Banana trees in circles increase moisture content and lower soil temperature.
- Due to their height, Banana trees provide great windbreaks for weak-stemmed plants.
- Letting the Banana fruits overripe in the plant causes them to fall and decompose in the ground, furnishing the soil with nutrients for surrounding plants.
However, other plants also offer help to Banana trees.
- Planting nitrogen-fixing Legumes alongside Banana trees supplies the soil with nitrogen.
- Growing low-growing plants like Sweet Potatoes with Bananas can serve as ground cover and suppress weed growth.
- Aromatic herbs can offer a protective shield around Banana trees and decrease pest attacks.
2. Using Banana Peels as Fertilizer
Instead of throwing away the Banana peels, you can use them to prepare fertilizer for plants.
You can also prepare the fertilizer in bulk and pour them into your houseplants directly as the usual fertilizer dosage.
Further, fermenting Banana peels with equal amounts of vinegar and water is a great way to supply nutrients to acidic soil-loving plants like Rhododendrons, Blueberries, and Azaleas.
Banana peels have a high potassium content, an effective bloom-boosting nutrient.
You can fortify houseplant soil with potassium by composting or mulching Banana peels.
Also, Banana peels have the highest content of organic potassium (40%).
Moreover, potassium enhances water uptake between plant cells and offers disease protection.
Together with egg shells, Banana peels act as a bio-mulching film that can degrade in the soil and offer nutrients for plants.
To use as mulch, cut the peels into 1-inch pieces and bury them with the houseplant soil.
3. Making Traps for Flies
Flies are a nuisance, cause many diseases, and are a vector of plant pathogens.
However, you can easily prepare a non-toxic fly trap to keep the flies at bay.
The aroma will lure the flies, and they drown in the liquid slurry.
Besides, Banana peels are an effective aphid repellant, and they are easy to use.
Just cut fresh Banana peels into 1-inch pieces and bury them in the soil about 2-4 inches deep around the plant’s base.
This way, you can cast away the aphids from the houseplants, as aphids usually hate the smell of Bananas.
4. Attracting Pollinators for Flowers
Ripe Banana peels release pleasant aromas, an easy way to attract butterflies, wasps, bees, and birds.
This is because they tend to savor the flavor of ripe Banana fruits as a food source.
Hence, you can populate your garden with pollinators with the fragrance of Banana fruits.
Besides, wrapping raw fruit or vegetables with a ripe Banana can spike their ripening process.
Moreover, ripe Apples or Pears with Bananas can boost the ripening process more effectively.
Do you know the whole Banana Plant is full of medical and culinary uses?
From Editorial Team
Conclusion!
The reasons to plant Bananas in your garden include securing garden-related, medicinal, and culinary benefits.
But Bananas are often attacked by specific pests and pathogens. So, it’s mindful to keep your Banana plants secure.
