Almost Time for Banana Harvest

My very last post was about bananas and I wrote it about 3 months ago. Well it took 3 months from Bell to Banana – which means many people have been LYING to me: the Paid Gardener, our wonderful dentist’s husband, and Grandpa. They said bananas come in 2 kinds – 45-day and 60-day. Mine, they claimed, are 60-day bananas – except they are 90-day bananas.

Here are my 90-day bananas:

If you look carefully, you can see the signal banana turning yellow, just at its tip. Look to the right? If you can’t see it, here is a close up shot:

When the signal banana is more or less totally yellow, the whole stem of bananas is ready for picking! We have been arguing at home about what the collective noun is for bananas. Seems like the correct word for the “bunch” of bananas you can buy from Kevin our fruit man is “hand”. “Bunch” or “comb” refers to the whole stem of bananas you see in the photo above!

These bananas look bigger than our first bunch. I think my by-products are getting more nutritious!

 

Oh one thing I did not write about before is this. Just like the signal banana signals that the bunch is ready for harvest, the banana tree puts out a special leaf, called a spade leaf, just before the banana bell emerges.

See? I call a spade a spade, hahahahaha!!!

Banana Bounty

Today is a Very Important Day. One of our bananas turned a pale, delicate, yellow. Grandpa’s rule is as long as ONE banana turns yellow, the whole bunch is ready. So the Paid Gardener came and cut off the entire bunch! We got 8 hands from it. The total weight was just about 15kg, but the Paid Gardener said something was wrong with our scales because he thought it weighed at least 20kg. He claimed he was an experienced banana man.

I labelled almost every single hand with a recipient’s name. The biggest is Godma’s, and it was almost 3kg! See the yellow banana on the right? That was our signal banana.

Just so you can admire more bananas, the next biggest hand is for my Pediatrician’s husband. He only eats bananas. I mean, the only fruit he eats is banana.

Then next on the bunch came our kind neighbour’s bananas. See? It says #12. We are at #10. Like Downing Street, you know.

This was a GOOD JOB WELL DONE!!

The Ups and Downs of my Cucumber

My cucumber that the Paid Gardener got for me have had their ups, and their downs, then their ups and downs, then their ups, then their upper ups, and now they are down with powdery mildew. But I enjoyed taking the artistic shots anyway.

Cu-cu-cu-cu-cucumber

Do you know the song Ho-ho-ho-ho-hosanna? We sing it at Sunday School a lot. Anyway, my poor cucumbers from the Paid Gardener, which collapsed TWICE not just once, are now doing ok. Fingers crossed. It is now growing very fat tendrils and plenty of new furly leaves. See?

Cucumber is Gone AGAIN!!!

Remember I complained our thick-stemmed fast-growing cucumber, from the Paid Gardener, collapsed on us? It’s done it again. We germinated 3 more seedlings when the first lot collapsed. All went well until today when 2 of the 3 flopped over!

Look!

But don’t worry, we have lots of cucumber seeds, and Mummy says we will keep trying til we suc-seed. Get it??!!

Collapsed Cucumber

Remember my excellent cucumber seedlings from the Paid Gardener’s cucumber seeds? I’m not sure what happened, but don’t they look sad? Grandpa says he does not think they will survive.

I am Selling Seedlings!

My Primary One teacher suggested that I could use my gardening interest to raise money for the Rainbow Centre for children with special needs. Since I love to germinate seedlings, and I have a lot of seeds, I am now offering seedlings for sale at $1 per cup (1 or 2 seedlings per cup, depending on Mummy’s mood).

I will offer a senior citizen’s (over 90 years old) discount of 50%.

Currently, this is my inventory:

 Cucumber from the Paid Gardener, fast growing! It germinated in a day. Here they are lined up like little soldiers.

I also have red okra, green okra, red aztec corn and  millionaire sunflower seedlings from Thailand.

I will also germinate on request from my seed stash!

I am NOT responsible for how well you manage to grow your seedlings. It’s your problem once they leave my garden, ok? No refunds or replacements will be given. Mummy says this is a disclaimer of liability.So I must put it in bold.

 

 

 

 

 

More Bad Examples

Novice Gardener has been having mealy issues. Our cotton plants followed their bad example. And then our frangipani followed along too.

Here is a mealy frangipani leaf:

And even more horrible, look at the red rust on this leaf below!

 

 

It must be time for the Paid Gardener to attack the rust with chemical zappers!

First Flowery Post – Frangipani

 

Look at the first flowers on our frangipani after we trimmed the tree back! The tree was attacked by red rust. Nothing worked to get rid of it, until the Paid Gardener whacked it with some toxic chemical. All the leaves fell off and the tree was botak for a long time. Now it has recovered!

 

 

 

When the frangipani tree was first planted, its flowers were dark red. Now they are pink. I don’t know why.

 

Banana Coffee Shake

Look at the lovely colour! We gave our flowering and fruiting plants a nice drink of banana peels blended with coffee grounds (from Mummy’s kind kopi ladies) and egg shells. Novice Gardener told me to do that to boost potassium levels (potassium helps make fruit big). We offered some shake to the Paid Gardener but he said his plants only drank plain water.

The garden smelled like coffee for ages. I am not sure if we put enough banana peels in! Daddy said that our plants would keep awake all night after all that coffee!

PS That’s MY right hand and right foot in the photo – my parents say no faces allowed.