• daltotron@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The fuck aren’t we growing these kinds of bananas everywhere in overly exploited republics and then importing them into the US? Fuck the gros michel, fuck these petty banana snack foods, I want a banana that I can eat as a meal.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      We picked the Gros Michel (before it got decimated by Panama Disease) and now the Cavendish because they can be mass grown, harvested before they are ripe, shipped around the world with minimal special handling, be ripened locally, and can survive all that without getting blemished.

      While there are plenty of other bananas, really only those varieties could do that. Bananas cost less than a buck per pound. Other varieties would have to be shipped by air with special handling and cost many times more.

        • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I live in the Midwest, and had a coworker with a banana plant (I think a Cavendish). He cut it down and dug up the root ball to bring inside every winter. Every few years, the weather was warm enough long enough the thing actually made bananas.

          • MechanicalJester@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            They need a small greenhouse for it. Leave it where it is, put weed block down 8’x8’ Get 3 45deg top fittings for fence rail pipe 10’ long 2 8’ 2x4 boards

            Make tall triangle greenhouse using the pipes for the 6 legs 4 feet apart.

            Use the 2x4s on the inside to hold the pipe spacing and structure

            Cover in greenhouse plastic.

            Go bananas

          • daltotron@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Couldn’t we have like greenhouses at some level of scale? Maybe even like, integrate it more easily into normal housing or just larger public spaces? Banana trees get tall, but they don’t get so tall that you couldn’t probably fit them into a lot of places. Beyond that I think maybe the only problem would be, like, humidity, which there’s probably some sort of workaround for, I dunno.

            • derf82@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              Banana trees take up a lot of space. And heating greenhouses would be very expensive.

            • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              Considering the size of the Canadian tomato industry (all greenhouse), it does seem like bananas should also solve. Just bananas can’t pack as densely as tomatoes, but maybe throw one banana tree in every dozen rows of tomatoes or something. A girl can dream.

    • antidote101@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I imagine less sweet and with the dry tang of an overly ripe banana. I imagine by the end of consuming some you’re no longer interested in eating this kind of banana again.

      They’re more than likely not new, so we can assume there’s some other reason they’re not as good. Taste is the most obvious factor to be the culprit.

      • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        It’s more likely they ship poorly. Same reason the tastiest tomato or strawberry varieties are not the ones grown commercially.

      • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
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        7 months ago

        If you googled it you’d see that it’s described as creamy and sweet.