Gadenin日本語Get the appYou harvest green, and that is not a compromise
Almost nobody who has not grown bananas expects this: the bunch comes off the plant while it is still fully green, and ripens afterwards away from the plant. This is not a way of hurrying things or a second-best option. Fruit that ripens on the plant splits its skin, develops a dull mealy texture, and attracts every bird, wasp and rodent in the neighborhood. Fruit cut at the right green stage and ripened off the plant is sweeter, has better texture, and reaches you intact.
The judgement you need to make, then, is not about color. It is about whether the fingers have finished filling. Once you know what that looks like, harvest timing stops being difficult.
Reading the fruit
A young banana finger is sharply angular in cross-section, with distinct ridges running down its length, and it feels thin. As it matures it plumps out, the angles round off, and the ridges become shallow until the finger is almost circular in section. That rounding is the primary sign, and it is what growers mean when they say the fruit has filled out.
Look at the top hand of the bunch first, the one nearest the plant, because it fills earliest and sets the schedule. Alongside the rounding, watch for the small dried remains of the flower at each finger tip going brittle and rubbing off easily, and for the deep green fading to a paler, slightly yellowish green. Any one of these on its own is weak evidence; all three together mean cut it.
| Sign | Not ready | Ready to cut |
|---|---|---|
| Finger shape | Sharply ridged, angular | Rounded, ridges shallow or gone |
| Color | Deep glossy green | Paler green, slightly yellow cast |
| Flower remains | Still attached and soft | Dry, brittle, rubs off |
| First finger yellowing | None | One finger anywhere turning; cut immediately |
| Time since flowering | Under three months | Roughly three to five months in warm conditions |
If a single finger anywhere on the bunch starts to turn yellow on the plant, cut the whole bunch that day. That finger has begun releasing ripening gas and the rest will follow within days, on the plant, where you do not want it.
Cutting the bunch down
A full bunch is far heavier than it looks, commonly forty to eighty pounds (18 to 36 kg), and it will drop hard and bruise every finger if you simply cut through the stem. Treat this as a two-person job the first time.
- Get a second pair of hands One person supports the bunch from below or takes the weight against a shoulder padded with a folded sack; the other cuts. Attempting it alone almost always means a dropped bunch and a row of split fingers on the underside.
- Notch the pseudostem to lower the bunch Cut halfway through the pseudostem a few feet above the bunch with a machete or heavy knife. The stem bends over slowly under the weight, bringing the bunch down to a workable height while it is still attached.
- Cut the bunch stalk clear Sever the stalk about six inches (15 cm) above the top hand. That length gives you something to hang the bunch by later. Keep the bunch upright as you carry it so the hands do not crush against each other.
- Let the cut stalk drain Stand the cut bunch upside down for half an hour before handling it further. Banana sap runs freely from the cut and stains skin and clothing permanently brown; letting it drain first saves a good deal of mess.
- Cut down the spent pseudostem That stem has now finished and will never fruit again. Chop it down to about a foot (30 cm), then take it right to the ground a week or two later. Chop the material up and spread it as mulch around the clump; it is mostly water and potassium and it feeds the successor sucker directly.
Ripening off the plant
Hang the whole bunch in a shaded, airy, frost-free place, out of direct sun. A garage, porch or shed is ideal. Hanging rather than laying it down matters: fingers resting on a surface develop pressure bruises that turn black as they ripen. Left alone at room temperature, the bunch begins to yellow in one to three weeks depending on how far advanced it was and how warm the space is.
The bunch will not ripen all at once, which is a mercy. Hands ripen in sequence from the top down, giving you a rolling supply over a couple of weeks rather than eighty pounds of ripe fruit in one afternoon. Cut hands off as they turn and bring them indoors.
To speed things up, seal a hand in a paper bag with a ripe apple; the ethylene the apple gives off pushes the bananas along and can halve the time. To slow things down, separate the hands and keep them somewhere cool but above 55F (13C). Below that the fruit suffers chilling injury: the skin goes dull gray-brown and the flesh never ripens properly. A refrigerator is fine for fruit that is already ripe and only for a few days, and it is wrong for anything still green.
The rest of the bunch, and what to record
Below the fruiting hands, the stalk continues into a large purple bud, sometimes called the bell or the banana flower. It will keep producing tiny male flowers that set nothing. Cut the stalk off about six inches (15 cm) below the last hand you intend to keep once the bud is a foot (30 cm) or so clear of the fruit; the plant stops spending energy on it and puts the difference into the fruit. The bud itself is edible and worth cooking with.
Record the date the bunch first emerged from the top of the pseudostem, the date you cut it, and roughly what it weighed. Those three numbers, gathered over two or three fruitings, tell you how many months your climate really takes from flower to harvest, which is the single most useful piece of information you can have when deciding whether a late-emerging bunch has any chance of finishing before cold weather.