Under the heading of "Banana," all kinds of plantains will also be
included, as they belong to one and the same family. The members of this
family of plants are all tropical, and produce the most typical and best
known tropical fruits.
[Illustration: Cavendish Bananas on scrub land, Buderim Mountain.]
[Illustration: Cavendish Bananas at Woombye on newly cleared land.]
The rank luxuriance of the growth of this class of fruits, their
handsome foliage, their productiveness, their high economic value as
food, and their universal distribution throughout the tropics, all
combine to place them in a premier position. As a food it is unequalled
amongst fruits, as no matter whether it is used green as a vegetable,
ripe as a fruit, dried and ground into flour, or preserved in any other
way, it is one of the most wholesome and nutritious of foods for human
consumption. It is a staple article of diet in all tropical countries,
and the stems of several varieties make an excellent food for all kinds
of stock.
[Illustration: Twenty-dozen Bunch, Buderim Mountain.]
In Queensland, the culture of bananas is confined to the frostless belts
of the eastern seaboard, as it is a plant that is extremely susceptible
to cold, and is injured by the lightest frosts. It is grown in
favourable locations in the South, where it produces excellent fruit,
but its cultivation is much greater in the North, where the rainfall is
heavier and the average annual temperature greater. In the Southern part
of the State its cultivation is entirely in the hands of white growers,
who have been growing it on suitable soil in suitable localities for the
past fifty years or even more. I recently saw an old plantation that was
set out over twenty years ago, and the present plants are still strong
and healthy, and bearing good bunches of well-filled fruit, so that
there is no question as to the suitability of the soil or climate.
Bananas do best on rich scrub land, and it is no detriment to their
growth if it is more or less covered with stones as long as there is
sufficient soil to set the young plants. Shelter from heavy or cold
winds is an advantage, and the plants thrive better under these
conditions than when planted in more exposed positions. Bananas are
frequently the first crop planted in newly burnt off scrub land, as they
do not require any special preparation of such land, and the large
amount of ash and partially burnt and decomposed vegetable mould provide
an ample supply of food for the plants' use. Bananas are rank feeders,
so that this abundance of available plant food causes a rapid growth,
fine plants, and correspondingly large bunches of fruit. Though newly
burnt off scrub land is the best for this fruit, it can be grown
successfully in land that has been under cultivation for many years,
provided that the land is rich enough naturally, or its fertility is
maintained by judicious green and other manuring. In newly burnt off
scrub land all that is necessary is, to dig holes 15 to 18 inches in
diameter, and about 2 feet deep, set the young plants in it, and partly
fill in the hole with good top soil. The young plant, which consists of
a sucker taken from an older plant, will soon take root and grow rapidly
under favourable conditions, producing its first bunch in from ten to
twelve months after planting. At the same time that it is producing its
first bunch it will send up two or more suckers at the base of the
parent plant, and these in turn will bear fruit, and so on. After
bearing, the stalk that has produced the bunch of fruit is cut down; if
this is not done it will die down, as its work has been completed, and
other suckers take its place. Too many suckers should not be allowed to
grow or the plants will become too crowded, and be consequently stunted
and produce small bunches. All the cultivation that is necessary is the
keeping down of weed growth, and this, once the plants occupy the whole
of the land, is not a hard matter. A plantation is at its best when
about three years old, but remains profitable for six years or longer;
in fact, there are many plantations still bearing good fruit that have
been planted from twelve to twenty years. Small-growing or dwarf kinds,
such as the Cavendish variety, are planted at from 12 to 16 feet apart
each way, but large-growing bananas, such as the Sugar and Lady's
Finger, require from 20 to 25 feet apart each way, as do the
stronger-growing varieties of plantain. Plantains are not grown to any
extent in Queensland, and our principal varieties are those already
mentioned, the Cavendish variety greatly predominating. In the North,
the cultivation of this latter variety is carried out on an extensive
scale, principally by Chinese gardeners, who send the bulk of their
produce to the Southern States of the Commonwealth. The industry
supports a large number of persons other than the actual producers of
the fruit, and forms one of our principal articles of export from the
North. As many as 20,000 or more large bunches of bananas frequently
leave by a single steamer for the South, and the bringing of this
quantity to the port of shipment gives employment to a number of men on
tram lines and small coastal steamers. The shipment of a heavy cargo of
bananas presents a very busy scene that is not soon forgotten, the
thousands of bunches of fruit that are either piled up on the wharf or
that are being unloaded from railway trucks, small steamers or sometimes
Chinese junks, forming such a mass of fruit that one often wonders how
it is possible to consume it all before it becomes over-ripe. Still, it
is consumed, or, at any rate, the greater portion of it is, as it is the
universal fruit of the less wealthy portion of the community, the price
at which it can be sold being so low that it is within the reach of
everyone. A banana garden in full bearing is a very pretty sight, the
thousands of plants, each with their one or more bunches of fruit, as,
where there are several stems it is not at all uncommon to find two or
more bunches of fruit in different states of development on the same
plant, forming a mass of vegetation that must be seen to be appreciated.
This is the case even with dwarf-growing kinds, but with strong-growing
varieties, such as the Lady's Finger, the growth is so excessive that
the wonder is, how the soil can support it.
[Illustration: Bananas for shipment at Innisfail.]
Bananas do remarkably well in Queensland, and there is practically an
unlimited area of country suitable for their culture, much of which is
at present in a state of Nature. Only the more easily accessible lands
have been worked and of these only the richest. Manuring is unknown in
most parts, and as soon as the plantation shows signs of deterioration
it is abandoned, and a fresh one planted out in new land, the land
previously under crop with bananas being either planted in sugar-cane or
allowed to run to grass. This is certainly a very wasteful method of
utilising our land, and the time will come, sooner or later, when
greater care will have to be given to it, and that once land has become
impoverished by banana culture, it will have to be put under a suitable
rotation of crops, so as to fit it for being again planted to bananas.
The trouble is, as I have already stated, we have too much land and too
few people to work it, hence, so far, we are unable to use it to
anything like the best advantage. During the year 1904 the production of
bananas in Queensland was some 2,000,000 bunches, and when it is
considered that each bunch will average about 12 dozen fruit, it will be
seen that already we are producing a very large quantity. There is,
however, plenty of room for extension, and any quantity of available
country, but before this extension can be profitable, steps will have to
be taken to utilise the fruit in a manner other than its consumption as
fresh fruit, and this in itself will mean the opening up of new
industries and the employment of a considerable amount of labour. I have
mentioned 12 dozen as being the average quantity of fruit per bunch, but
it is frequently much more than this, and I have often seen bunches of
25 to 30 dozen fine fruit grown on strong young plants on rich new land.
Although the industry in the North is now almost entirely in the hands
of Chinese gardeners, there is no reason whatever why it should not be
run by white growers, as is done in the South, and there is no question
that our white-grown bananas in the South compare more than favourably
with the Northern Chinese-grown article, despite the fact that the
latter has every advantage in climate and an abundance of virgin soil.
Most of the photos of bananas are, I am sorry to say, not by any means
typical of this industry, as they have been taken during the off-season,
when the plants look ragged and are showing little new growth, and the
bunches also are much smaller than usual. Still, I hope that the
illustrations will give some idea of the growing and handling of this
crop, and will show what a banana plant and its bunch are like.