BANANA PLANTATION (Brgy. San Francisco, Bulan)

Did You Know?

• The scientific name for banana is musasapientum, which means “fruit of the wise men.”
• Bananas float in water, as do apples and watermelons.
• The Banana Club Museum, located on Highway 111 in Mecca, Calif. (just south of Palm Springs), houses the world’s largest collection devoted to any one fruit. It contains more than 17,000 banana items, most of which have been donated by members.
• If you rub the inside of a banana peel on a scrape or burn, it will help the pain go away, keep the swelling down, and keep the wound from getting infected.
• If you rub the inside of a small piece of banana peel on a wart every night (or tape a
  
  piece of peel over the wart), the potassium in the peel can make the wart disappear in one to two weeks.
• To whiten teeth naturally, rub the inside of a banana peel on your teeth for about two minutes every night. If you gargle with salt water, this will heighten the effect. Expect results in about two weeks. It works because of the effect of the potassium, magnesium, and manganese in the banana peel.
• Rubbing a banana peel on your forehead can help cure a headache. 
• More than 100 billion bananas are eaten every year in the world, making them the fourth most popular agricultural product. 
• A cluster of bananas is called a hand, and a single banana is called a finger. Each banana hand has about 10 to 20 fingers.
• About 75 percent of the weight of a banana is water.

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   An approximately two hectares of land planted with different varieties of bananas. According to Mr. Felipe Fortes, the type of soil of the land is Class-B, which means the land has the average rate of production of plants. The plants in this type of soil need fertilizer.

   Majority of the lands plant is Saba or locally known as “Calibo”. The Saba covers around 70 percent of the land and the other 30 percent to those other types of bananas. There are more than five hundred planted Saba and more than one hundred planted for the other types.

Production of Plantation

A Banana is planted not by seed but by bulb. A banana bulb when planted will take about two years before it bear fruits, then, 8 to 9 months when it is ready to harvest. Mr. Felipe give us a tip when to plant banana that will produce a very good fruit – when separating the bulb from the mother tree, it is best to plant it early in the morning but make sure that the fog in the leaves are already dry because leaving the fog on the leaves will make its fruit a not so good looking and each fingers will be small and few hands will be produce.

Mr. Felipe can harvest 20 to 25 trees per month. He can sell it 10 pesos per kilo for wholesaler and 12-15 pesos per kilo for retailer or 15 pesos per hand for wholesaler and 20-25 pesos per hand for retailer. However, not all the plants can produce good quality of fruit. There are some rejected due to improper ripening of fruit and some are eaten by birds when it is still on the tree.

Problems confronting the Plantation

• Cold season, that causes the plant not to bear good quality fruit.
• Plants destroyed by different calamities.
• Birds that eat the fruits.
• The soil needs to be fertilized.

Some Photos taken during the interview:

~authored by Joel Gustuir

Sources:
• http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/15-facts-you-probably-didnt-know-about-bananas/
• http://thebananapolice.com/fun-facts/