Build a Banana Circle
Conservation, Food Forests, Food Plants - Perennial — by Jan Buckley
A banana-paw paw circle is an excellent way to grow fine fruit and root vegetable crops whilst using up excess water and organic wastes.
by Jan Buckley
Why it works so well
The design is basically a circular swale, and it works well because there’s only one place to mulch, feed and water, which serves many plants. It’s a good spot to put all your kitchen scraps, to use as a handy compost heap, and it can also take cardboard, paper and tin cans. It can make use of excess water run-off, or if water is scarce, greywater can be directed to the circle so water is reused.
On top of that, bananas grow well in a circle, and bear bunches on the outside. Both bananas and paw paws are gross feeders and thrive on nutrients from the decaying organic matter in the central hole.
So you get ample production of fruit, and root crops. You can also plant climbing plants like beans to grow up the banana stalks once they are tall. Volunteer plants like pumpkins and tomatoes are likely to spring up from vegetable scraps in the compost.
Step by step establishment
You will need about four banana suckers (preferably a dwarf variety, to allow easy picking), four to five paw paws and ten sweet potato runners; also newspaper and plenty of mulch material.
Start by marking a circle about two metres in diameter. Then dig a dish-shaped hole 0.5 to one metre deep in the centre. Mound the soil around the outside in a circular ridge. If you like you can dig a narrow inlet at ground level to collect rainwater runoff.
Cover the whole earth circle with wet paper or cardboard, or banana leaves. Fill the hollow with rough mulch material such as course twigs, leaves, straw, decaying logs, rice husks, etc. Add scatterings of manure, ash, lime, dolomite or other fertilisers. Overfill into a dome; it will sink down over time.
If stones are available you can bank them around the outside of the rim.
Now plant banana suckers at 60cm intervals around the rim of the mound. Pierce the newspaper and mulch layers and plant into the fine raised soil.
Alternate with paw paws, and fill the spaces on the top and outside of the rim with sweet potato. Ten or so plants will spread to cover the soil with their edible foliage. You can also use other root crops like cassava and Jerusalem artichokes. Comfrey can be interplanted as a green manure crop; cut the leaves and add them to the nutrient heap as fertiliser.
On the inside of the rim you can add shade and moisture-loving plants like taro and ginger.
Shower within, garden without
Your banana-paw paw circle can become an outdoor shower or wash-up area if you put a circular grid or wooden slatted platform over the mulch in the centre.
You can plan a mandala garden using the circle as the focal point. Wrap a circular sawdust path around the outside with keyhole garden beds radiating off it. Keep an access path to give entry to the banana circle.
This design can be scaled larger for communities such as schools and villages, and has proved useful in countries like the Philippines and India. Multiple circles with vegetable mandalas produce food for villagers, use roof runoff or reuse washroom water where water is a critical resource, and provide shady areas for people to sit outside.
Meanwhile it is something almost any of us can do in a back garden or bit of space. It is easy, effective and looks good too.
The pattern, which particularly suits tropical and subtropical areas, can be adapted to temperate or other climates using different species.
Tin cans?? You put tin cans in your compost? Why??
Comment by naught101 — June 26, 2008 @ 5:56 pm
well if there is no reuser or scavengers to recycle them they break down into the elements that made them and return to the food chain. instead of being an eyesore and or hazard. though I think that was a bit sarcastic the original suggestion.
Comment by ewan quirk — June 27, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
sounds great but what climate limitations are there? i’m looking for a way to grow banana’s, pineapples and mangos in SA and dont think i have a snowballs chance.
Comment by MelJimAdelaide — July 4, 2008 @ 10:59 am
60cm is very close to plant the bananas, and will cause them to lean out considerably. Banana plants are filled with water, hence they are very heavy and can have a tendency to topple over if leaning too much. I have found it best to plant suckers at 3,6,9 & 12 o’clock on your circle. If you stick a bunch of sweet potato cuttings in your newly planted mound, this will hold, protect and improve the soil below.
The ongoing management of the stand is important too. You want to encourage the plants to walk around in a clockwise circle. Each of the original suckers you plant should eventually consist of a Grandma (full size plant with fruit formed) A Mother (medium sized plant which will take Granny’s place, as you must hack her down once she’s fruited, adding her body to the pile in the centre) and a Baby (one new sucker, again in a clockwise direction). All other suckers should be removed and replanted elsewhere or thrown into the centre if you’re already up to your eyeballs in bananas.
As Jan mentioned, you should always keep the pile in the centre heaped. If you follow these simple steps, you will have some very productive bananas on your hands (much more so than the sad looking bunch in he photo by the way)
Comment by Cam Wilson — July 18, 2008 @ 8:31 am
a drawing or photo of the process would be helpful.
great idea, though. I am going to give it a try. Hopefully I have understood the directions. (ie which ‘rim’ are you talking about? the rim of the mound or the rim of the inner dugout circle? )
If i have understood the directions, then it sounds like you plant the bananas on the mound of soil around the hole in the middle.
Wouldn’t that mean that when you water the bananas, the water would run off away from their roots?
Comment by wendy — August 9, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
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