Lakatan Banana Trees
I dropped by the agricultural fair at the Provincial Capitol of Cebu last week, in honor of the 439th Founder’s Day of the Province of Cebu, and was pleased to find several stalls with fruits and vegetables brought in by the farmers themselves. The first thing that caught my eye was this enormous lacatan or lakatan banana tree, complete with fruits, and some 40-50 little lakatan “suckers” or rhizomes that they had for sale. Since I was hoping to grow more of our own produce and fruit in the nearby city lot, I purchased 20 suckers for PHP500 (PHP25 or roughly 60 U.S. cents each), hoping that one or two of them would eventually yield a bunch of brilliant bananas.
Turns out the suckers or banana trees in general need SERIOUSLY rich soil and will take over a year to bear fruit, so that’s a big fat good luck to Marketman on this attempt to farm something… At any rate, I can always dream, and with a bunch of ripening lakatan bananas like those pictured below, you could say they sold me right at the display…
What a bargain! In these inflationary times, isn’t it nice that you can still buy something substantial (rather than trivial junk) for 25 pesos?
August 13th, 2008Lakatan bananas usually grow freely in plots near rice paddies. I have seen a couple of them in our town. I think the ones that grow without the need of a rich soil are the latundan varieties and the green ones, which grows even in abandoned plots here in the Metro.
I wish you all the luck Market Man in your bid to grow lakatan bananas.=)
August 13th, 2008They should be easy to grow and very low maintenance. We just plant the suckers then live them to grow. But they do need patience so just plant them now and forget about them. They’ll bear fruit on their own.
August 13th, 2008That’s the standard price for suckers. When the plant matures they grow little suckers of their own which you then have to separate from the mother plant. 20 suckers is a good number to start with. After a year, perhaps you can double your plantation. Bananas are easily grown and ROI is tenfold with the yield, not to mention the suckers for the next crop. The only drawback would be a typhoon, though! Good luck, I’m sure you won’t be buying lacatan bananas in the near future.
August 13th, 2008Hi MM!
M not a big fan of bananas but those ripe bananas you posted above look good!
August 13th, 2008Well, you can easily enrich your soil, can’t you?
August 13th, 2008Next you send your gofers out for horse manure. Are there still tartanillas in Cebu?
Sister, yup, there are still sources of horse manure… :) Can’t imagine how large banana plantations do it though if they plants suck up so many nutrients…
August 13th, 2008Is that what they really call them? I thought suckers are those insidious constricters that willow trees send out to strangle your sewer pipes.
August 13th, 2008That’s an absolute bargain! Oh, I wish we could plant banana trees here that would definitely bare fruit. I also heard that banana trees actually walk. Well, not really walk. But move slowly from one location to another.
August 13th, 2008Oh wow, 20 suckers…hahahah, how much acreage do you have? By about 1 1/2 years, you will have double this number. Here in Houston, because of the unpredictable freeze.. and heat.. Bananas trees survive but does not guarantee to bear fruit because of the season. They are however nice decorations in the yard. Landscape look tropic with these trees, and you can tell a house that belongs to an asian or oriental if they have banana trees planted. Lakatan is good, next to unripe saba, they are delicious to eat when its ripe from the tree.
Your picture reminds me of the San Isidro fiesta that I witnessed in Mauban Quezon. Houses were decorated with the farmer’s harvest, and some people put a whole tree like that as part of their design.
August 13th, 2008I never knew bananas were that tricky! I kinda agree with Gay. We have a small farm in the province, and my father just plants the suckers and lets it be.
August 14th, 2008I like the latundan bananas more than the lakatan. The big ones are scary
August 14th, 2008MM,
August 14th, 2008If somehow you can’t get the trees to bear fruit, at least you have a ready source of babana leaves - for kakanins, sumans, inihaws, or even for cooking rice sung-sung style - that is, a handful of raw rice grains are put in a pouch made of banana leaves before cooking, very similar to how the visayan “puso” is done.
A word of caution: avoid harvesting the young spouts/leaves, it stunts the growth of the banana tree.
MM,
August 14th, 2008Bananas are tricky, yes, but quite easy to grow. Plot them out at least 3m by 3m square and give them all the compost you can lay your hands on. Just make sure to leave 3 plants in each group (or stool) of bananas - one that’s fruiting, an adolescent, and a baby. Any more than that will tire out your mother plant and you’ll get less fruits.
I’m quite sure you know how to make compost (or you’ll definitely find out how!) and with all the delicious meals you cook, you’ll have plenty of raw materials for your new stint in becoming a probinsyano farmer!
By the way, when you thin out the plants, the center of the banana stalk or the ubad makes a darn good soup with a fat native chicken, lemon grass, ginger and a visayan bean called kadios…
Welcome to the world of farming from a fellow probinsyana!
mona, yes, we do compost kitchen scraps (vegetable and fruit) and garden clippings, but that is here in Manila. We don’t do it in cebu… need to get that started there, too… And I have had ubad before, but have no idea how to harvest it. Is it from a mature tree or a young one, and how far up do I use the center of the banana stalk? Any suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated…
sonny sj, you are right, I can’t really go wrong with planting the trees (HERBS, actually… a factoid that always amazes me)… hmmm, never tried rice in banana leaves, though malagkit served on banana I have had…
Fabian, you crack me up. You are perhaps the only reader that has left a comment on this blog that is “scared” of a banana!
August 14th, 2008MM, just copied this from an ilonngo site…i remember our helper slicing the ubad thin and twirling with the knife at the same, to get rid of the “fiber”. it is quite fibrous!! you don’t have to chop–squeezing it with salt will mash it into small pieces:
Ubad as it known to aklanons, must be harvested from young Saba plants (others use butuan)
August 15th, 2008Young Saba plants are about 4 feet tall and have not yet blossomed.
Harvest the ubad about a foot from the base to just below the point where the leaves begin.
Peel off the tough outer layers to get to the tender core.
Chop the ubad finely and mash with salt to remove the acrid taste.
Spin a piece of stick (toothpick, bamboo, or wooden chopsticks) through the ubad to remove the web like fiber. It is now ready for cooking.
Hi MM, I really wanted to show a very interesting picture of a banana plant that will WOW you but cannot send it as an attachment to this comment.
why don’t you send me an email and I will attach the picture and you can show it to your readers.
Cheers!
August 18th, 2008Hi MM, just had a chat with our family kusinero (my dad is very old-fashioned; kusineras cannot compete, in his opinion!)
August 19th, 2008Choose a young saba plant about 12 inches in diameter and cut it a foot above the ground. Peel off the outer layers until you come to the tender, white center (it’s called ploresen, so i think you’ll have an idea of how thick it should be). Slice the ubad VERY thinly while twirling the banana filaments off with your forefinger. Then, sprinkle with rock salt until it’s juicy - he said treat it the same way as you would amargoso - then squeeze well and cook in soup with onion, garlic, ginger, lemon grass, chicken, and your choice of kadios, green lentils or monggo. If you like your soup spicy, a few chilies would work very well! Season it with patis only, no salt.
A twist we’ve put on it uses chorizo el rey and pork chunks instead of the chicken. Omit the ginger and lemon grass please and substitute bay leaves if you want to try this version.
mona, thank you so much for that. I will remember this advice when I manage to get young shoots of banana… thanks! Virgie, my email address in is the contact portion of the site, up top. Thanks!
August 19th, 2008Hi MM, I tried your email but but it does not allow me to attach the picture. Cheers!
August 19th, 2008