General Chat

About 35 years ago my parents were invited to a neighbours to sample their home made wine....I dont think they remember much about the night :-D except the banana wine tasted like whiskey???

Anyway we had all sorts of wine being made all over the house after that...never did find out whether banana's were a good substitute or not :-)

I'm wondering if the dogs next door would be tempted by a bone covered with banana :-D

Or...... the bananas are so hard, they might think I've given them a bone? :-D

How to slow down Ripening of Banana

Home grown bananas are often wasted because all the fingers on a bunch tend to ripen at the same time. Individual hands can be removed from a green bunch and ripened separately so that you can have ripe bananas over a period of time.

Leave the bunch to ripen in a cool, well ventilated place. Leave the plastic bag cover on the bunch, but open the bottom to provide a small amount of ventilation to the fruit. Best results are obtained when temperatures can be maintained at about 20°C.

If temperatures are above 26°C, the fruit will soften and the pulp will ripen while the skin is still pale green. This is a condition known as 'green ripe'. Fruit ripened when day temperatures are around 25°C to 28°C and night temperatures are 17°C to 18°C are usually ready to eat in 2-5 days, depending on the variety. Ripening will take a little longer in cooler temperatures.

DPI.Qld.Gov.

As fruit ripens it gives off a chemical called ethylene, which in turn accelerates ripening. If a banana is separated from the bunch, it doesn't have access to as much of this gas because it is alone, however bananas in a bunch share the ethylene produced by the others in the bunch, thus speeding up the ripening process.

20C? hahahahaha That's the temperature we get in winter :-D

We put plastic bags over the bunches when they are still on the tree (mostly to keep the possums off).

We usually only have one bunch at a time hanging in the garage.

They are hanging in the garage, which is probably the coolest place in the house. We don't want the bananas to ripen all at once, so there is no plastic bag over them.

We'll be giving loads of bananas away this week. I have a class on Tuesdays, usually between 10-15 people, so I plan taking a bunch......... and another class on Wednesday, anything between 6-15.

The bananas that were bruised & bashed during the storm have been put to use ~ fed them to the epiphytes.

:-D

Yeh, I thought you would find that funny. After the last couple of cool days, we are on the climb up the thermometer again !

Only a few bananas left, we've eaten so many we look jaundiced :-)

I've made banana cakes, muffins etc, the freeezer is stuffed.

I also dried some. I bought a dehydrater last year, but hadn't used it. Lost count of the number of bananas I sliced up....... took 10 hours to dry them!

The big bunches of bananas (hanging in the garage) were too heavy for me, so I went to the garage with a bowl and cut the bananas off. When OH got home he carried the bunch inside & put it on the sink. No problem............ until the next morning when we found squillions of ants everywhere! OH picked up the bunch, I opened the door........ and an ENORMOUS brown hairy spider appeared on the top of the bunch!!!!!

Where was he when I was cutting off the bananas?

I HATE SPIDERS!!!!!!!

So, there's OH with a half-picked bunch of bananas, a HUGE spider crawling everywhere, me at the door, screaming and jumping about (well, as far as I can with my rotten kneees)......... and OH is yelling "Stop screaming, it's only a bl**dy spider".

Two buckets of water thrown over the bananas....... and we have no idea where the spider went.

Maybe yesterday's water dragon will come back and eat him.

:-D