Apple Bananas
Apple Bananas “Latundan” are such a delight to eat. They also provide your daily dose of potassium. I used to have apple bananas in my garden. I was able to have it flowered and gathered this bunch of bananas. My friend from Wahiawa gave the seedling to me. I thought it would be a dwarf variety but it grew so tall the community garden officers asked me to cut it down. We can only have plants up to five feet in height. I did but after I got this bunch. It was fun having bananas in my garden. I can use the leaves for cooking as wrapper for suman sa lihia, and other desserts like bibingka. I could also cook the heart of the banana as vegetable. We normally use it in “Kare-kare” as one of the vegetable ingredients. Others would be eggplants, long beans and pechay or bok choy.
Anyways, bananas are easy to grow. It just needs lots of moisture and the soil should be full of composted materials. After gathering the bunch of fruit, you need to cut the whole tree down because it will die eventually anyways after fruiting. But there will be little keikis or little trees around the old tree to replace it. You don’t even have to worry about planting ever again.
There is also a banana we call “saba” for cooking. It is almost the same as plantain bananas except for the shape. This is the type of bananas we use for banana lumpia, for ginatan and other desserts.
When I have the tree in the garden, I saw all kinds of geckos especially the green ones. I hardly see the green geckos now only the brown ones. I took pictures of the green geckos then I can show you next time.