Mr. Permaculture on Adventure #1: Banana Circle in my Front Yard
A banana circle is an excellent way to grow banana, papaya, pigeon pea, tomato, bean, sweet potato, malanga, and other root crops while using up excess water and organic matter.
The design is very simple - basically digging a hole for feed/water and surrounded by many plants.
Our kitchen scraps have gone to a banana circle as shown below, on a gentle slope in the front yard to capture and store rainwater, mineral nutrients, and organic matter. It is surrounded by productive banana, papaya, pigeon pea, sweet potato, mahogany splendor hibiscus, and cassava.
It can make use of excess run-off rainwater, or if water is scarce, greywater can be directed to the circle so water is reused. I can even put a shower head there to reuse the water. After plants have grown to provide privacy, taking a shower there would give a true feeling of tropical jungle.
Do you see I use an earth berm made from dugout soil on both sides of the banana circle to direct rainwater from a slope to the hole?
The first 4 photos below captured what it looked like 3 months ago. Plants were struggling a little and not growing much.
Zooming in a little to the hole ...
Zooming in a little more ...
Zooming in even more ...
Zooming out ... this last photo is from this morning. Banana plants have increased their size multiple times.
Thank you for reading my post. If you enjoyed it, please Upvote, Comment, Resteem and follow me @cheneats.
Next posts will be my adventure of
Past post on my garden tour:
Thanks for the mini tour, it looks GORGEOUS where you are :) :) :) Your plants are really thriving thanks to your technique. Well done!
Thank you so much for your kind words! :)
Upvoted everyone (@wwf, @lyndsaybowes, @sagescrub, @galberto) for encouraging @cheneats post, well done.
I am so grateful for your generosity, @drsinmongwong! I am speechless and will do the same for you as soon as I have some STEEM POWER.
You're most welcome, come by and read my new multi part post to help you get more Steem by improving the quality and influence of your post.
I'm working on the 2nd one right now, but the first is ready.
Wonderful. This is exactly what I am looking for! I am reading it now.
yaaaaa. Looks great. Tropical solutions! I think it is great that you picked up a shovel and tried something out. Results are promising. I look forward to seeing how those plants do year after year. Mark your spot where you took the picture and in 5 years you can show transition photos. :)
Thank you so much for the comment! A shovel and maybe a wheelbarrow is what's needed for a small off-grid garden. Great idea for the transition photos. I'll take pictures from time to time. :)
This is already inspiring some of my future temperate climate guilds :) I love the mini compost pit in the middle of the guild!
Thank you so much for the comment! 'Guild' is the proper word for a plant community living in symbiosis.
Guau great work great kind of food in a small space very eficiently.
Thank you for shared
Best regard @galberto
Thank you so much for the comment, @galberto. I hope more people plant an edible food forest. This is what we can do at the individual level to sequester more carbon to reduce greenhouse gas.
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