Banana Tree for Small Space Gardening

You wouldn't think there would be room for many trees in a small space garden, however, a banana tree doesn't really take much room because they grow tall, instead of spreading out, and you can always plant shade plants under them. 

Here's Jeff getting the soil ready for this year.  Notice that he's wearing gloves, which is kind of unusual for him.  However, we talked to the Nursery last year because the Banana Plant was getting lovely leaves on it, but it wasn't getting very tall.  We had already moved it from its former home in the corner to a new home where it gets more sun, this helped a little, but we wanted more!

The Nursery told us that in order to make it grow taller, we would have to use chicken (err stuff), to fertilize it.  Last year Jeff put that chicken "stuff" all over the front lawn in an attempt to fertilize it also.  I thought I was back on the farm!  It reaked for weeks! I don't think he will ever forget that, and neither will I.

Needless to say, this year it is confined to the banana plant(s), and we are going to try steer manure, since it's more available, and we found it on sale. It's also a little less aromatic.

If you're going to try to grow banana trees in your small space garden, don't go overboard and buy a bunch of them; just buy one for starters.  Even though this tree doesn't get very tall, it has given us a lot of baby banana plants, which we either plant ourselves, or give to our friends.  A small banana tree can cost about $50.00, so this is usually a great gift to give someone.  Jeff and his Mom even have races to see who can out-grow the other!  I think she even won last year with a race between two plants that they each had planted in Containers!

Here's the banana tree last year at the beginning of the year, it's not in a Container Garden, but rather in the corner of our yard.  It did get a lot bigger than this,but I can't seem to find the picture.  I'll post another picture at the end of the year and let you know if the manure was worth putting gloves on for.

Try Accents in the Garden if you want something fun to go under your Banana Tree