Going Bananas and getting stoned

A fun look at fruit picking and also some ideas on growing your own fruits

In their promotional brochures and videos Rustomjee has highlighted fruit picking at Urbania and even shown it in the visuals. As we wonder where and when the fruit picking will happen, remember we do have fruit trees all around. There are pomegranates, figs and grape fruit (also called Pomelo and not to be confused with grapes) on Podium level of Azziano. At Urban Farming of course there are many more fruit trees including banana, mango, guava and chikoo. At ground level of Azziano too there are banana plants.

The banana plants at Urbania have borne bananas and you may have seen the bunches on some trees. However, no fruit picking has happened and this issue deals with the subject. Coming back to bananas at Urban Farm as you enter the banana trees have fruit now. Still green but will soon ripen. When yellow these fruits can be eaten but will have stones in them. Wondering what is happening. Read on.

The banana you eat have small black seeds or sterile seeds those that won't germinate into a plant. Commercial bananas are grown from rhizomes, a stem modification. Due to such vegetative propagation all banana plants are related to one mother plant. Humans took one soft-seeded banana variety (called tripoloids in genetics and which have sterile or immature seeds) and propagated it by rhizomes for banana fruits. In the wild including our own Western Ghats grow bananas that continue to have large seeds and can be propagated by seeds too. Such bananas are called Jungle Bananas and are generally not favoured commercially. I have eaten Jungle Bananas which need you to separate in your mouth the fruit part from the hard seed and spit them out. Bit of an effort. But worth it since the Jungle Bananas too are sweet and like any other. They look like regular bananas but have large seeds which you can feel after biting into them.

Bunch of bananas at Urban Farming clicked on 26 October 2019

So this then is the story about the Urban Farm and Azziano Banana trees. They are wild ones with stone like seed. You can eat them but remember to spit out the seeds. As for fruit picking read the rest of the article on how you can grow fruits at your balcony.

First at Azziano A wing where we lived and now ar Azziano G Wing, we have been growing a Thai Guava tree. It is a small tree about four feet high and yields large guavas that can weigh more than one kg. Per fruit. It does bear fruits several times a year. As the fruits can be very high and sometimes are borne in pairs the branches sag and the fruit touches the floor if there are two per branch. Our guava tree is not a bonsai as some people think - it is a grafted tree with the scion (upper, fruit bearing stem of the tree) being a Thai Guava. We got it from Tukai Exotics, a nursery at Pune.

Growing fruit trees in your balcony is not very difficult. You need a large pot - we use one about one foot wide and more than one foot tall. A large pot with good potting mix planted with a grafted fruit tree is all you need. We can grow guavas, chikoos, pomegranates, mangoes, figs, bananas, custard apples and more in our fifty square foot balconies ar Rustomjee Urbania. Remember the fruit variety we grow will be suited for small spaces and though small our fruit trees will yield fruits like a regular tree. Their numbers will be lesser as compared to those from a large tree in an orchard.

To encourage urban farming we have a Whatsapp group of gardeners that helps enthusiasts source plants, take care of them and become a balcony farmer. Get in touch with me to join the group if you are interested - we are soon starting classes for vegetable farming at balconies.