On 05/07/2011 18:10, Jake wrote:
On Tue, 5 Jul 2011 08:04:47 -0700 (PDT),
wrote:

How are yours doing?
Any comments on removing the leaves to expose the fruit inorder to
ripen!!

This is a question that has generated heated debate amongst my
gardening friends. One agreement is that leaves are essential to the
process of photosynthesis that gives the plant energy so simply
removing them won't help at all.

If you are serious about encouraging early ripening leave a banana
somewhere close to the largest truss of fruit. I don't think they really
need that much sun to ripen.

I fall into the camp that removes leaves below the bottom truss (not
everyone agrees!) and I also remove sucker growth (but not everyone
does and I've heard arguments about not removing more than a couple of
suckers at a time as chopping a lot in one go wounds the plant too
much). Otherwise I only remove dying or dieased leaves if I get any -
this year so far so good.

Sometimes a plant can go ballistic and produce too many trusses. I
don't have any hard and fast rule, I sort of play it "by ear" and if I
think that a plant is getting over-hopeful, I may remove a "truss" or
two at the flowering stage.

I pinch out small sideshoots but if I miss one and it runs away I leave it.

Regards,
Martin Brown