Going Bananas grows bananas

February 27, 9:48 PMMiami Food and Drink ExaminerRosalie E. Leposky

Previous Next

Comment Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Miami Food and Drink Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

IFHIA Goldfinger, a disease-resistant
banana variety developed by the Fundacion
Honduriana Investigacion Agricola
© 2009 George Leposky
 

Want to buy banana plants for your backyard garden?  Visit Going Bananas,  a plant nursery in the Redland Agricultural District near Homestead that grows 90 varieties of organically grown bananas in a five-acre former lychee grove.

“We planted bananas between the rows of lychees,” says Don Chafin, who co-owns Going Bananas with his wife, Katie. “We have the largest collection of varieties of banana plants anywhere in the continental United States.”

Chafin also grows other tropical fruits, including papayas that grow on dozens of plants scattered among the bananas. “The papaya plants plant themselves with the help of birds,” he says.

The Chafins sell banana plants in two-gallon containers. If you want to buy bananas and/or banana plants from them, call first to make sure someone will be home when you go to the nursery.

Chafin also sells his bananas and papayas to Tim Tye, who acquires a supply each Friday and brings them into Miami on Saturday to sell at the weekly Coconut Grove Farmers Market.

Learning from Lessard

The Chafins bought their property in 1994. Also that year they purchased most of the banana stock – some 35 varieties – from William O. Lessard, a nearby grower who was retiring. Lessard had been growing bananas in a converted squash field he purchased in 1968.

Lessard and his wife, Suzie, were among the first vendors to participate in the Coral Gables Farmers Market, which began in 1991. That’s where I met them. My yard still has banana trees I bought from them.

In 1992, Lessard wrote and self-published a 119-page book, The Complete Book of Bananas, that is still one of the best available books on bananas. It’s now out of print, but Amazon.com and bookfinder.com sometimes offer it. The supply always was limited, and today it is very expensive. Lessard says that he intends to update and reprint it.

Other banana books

Books on bananas are popular. Here are a few other titles worth exploring:

• Bananas an American History by Virginia Scott Jenkins (Smithsonian Institution, 2000).
• Bananas you can grow by James Waddick and Glenn M. Stokes (Stokes Tropicals Publishing Co., 2000).
• The Bananas Lover’s Cookbook, Carol Lindquist (St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
• The Great Banana Cookbook for Boys and Girls by Eva Moore (Clarion Books, 1983), with great illustrations by Susan Russo.

Chafin recommends the books by Lindquist and Waddick, and sells them at Going Bananas.

Bananas and a papaya waiting to
be sold at the Coconut Grove
Farmers Market © 2009 Rosalie E.
Leposky
 

How bananas grow

Almost everyone likes bananas. We feed them to children and pack them in bag lunches.

In subtropical South Florida, banana plants grow like weeds as long as temperatures don’t dip toward freezing.  They thrive in warm temperatures and like lots of rain, but not high winds, which tear up their long leaves and upend their shallow roots.

Banana plants aren’t trees. They have no woody stem. A grass of the genus Musa, they fruit once and die. New plants grow from rhizomes or buds (eyes) that sprout from the roots. You can remove these rhizomes from the parent plants and put them into pots or transplant them. They do well in back yards and plant nurseries.

Banana nurseries today are concentrated in the Redland. In the past, central and north Miami-Dade County also had some, but land prices and urbanization have wiped those out.

Tim Tye holding a canistel (egg-fruit),
with a customer at the Coconut Grove
Farmers Market  © 2009 Rosalie E. Leposky

Bananas in history

The history of bananas in South Florida and the Americas is obscure. No one is sure when they arrived or who brought them.

In 1838, Dr. Henry Perrine moved from Mexico to Indian Key, an island in the Florida Keys that is now a state park. Dr. Perrine brought with him a variety of tropical plants, including agave, bananas, coffee, mango, and tea.
 
In 1855, a group of U.S. army engineers and surveyors invaded the home of Seminole Chief Billy Bowlegs in southwestern Florida and cut down his banana trees, an event that led to the Third Seminole War. It isn’t known where or how Chief Bowlegs obtained his bananas.

Perhaps the Spanish Conquistadores transported bananas from the Canary Islands and planted some in the Everglades two or three centuries before Dr. Perrine and Chief Bowlegs grew them.

“It is very hard to do genetic research on bananas, because there has been so much manipulation by humans,” says Dr. Richard Campbell, senior curator of tropical fruit at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden’s Center for Tropical Plant Conservation. “We don’t even know the wild relatives of edible bananas.”

Going Bananas 24401 South West 197th Ave., Homestead FL 33031. 305- 247-0397. Fax: 305- 247-7877, goingbananas@bellsouth.net.

Note: Click on the "Subscribe" button below to receive an email each time the Miami Food and Drink Examiner publishes a new article.

Other stories:

A Coconut Grove Cornucopia

Coral Gables hosts seasonal farmers market