Bognor gardener's secret to growing banana trees

SussexWorld

Former deep sea diver John White has spent his retirement growing banana trees in his back garden. They're his pride and joy. And here, he tells Sussex World reporter Connor Gormley exactly what goes into making them grow.

Transcript

00:00 me about how the wasps pollinate the fruit? Oh yes, the wasps have the scent of the flower

00:07 and they're around it now as you can see underneath there. Yeah. And they even can detect the

00:13 smell of the flower before the actual leaves open so they've got a highly sensible smell.

00:22 What is it that allows you, because a lot of people would assume that banana trees only

00:25 grow in very tropical climates, obviously it's a very windy day today, is it just hard

00:30 work or is there anything else to it? It can be hard work, I have to cover the tree up

00:35 every autumn to get it through the winter and it's taken me about four to five years

00:40 to get this far and then you have to chance luck and here it is. So obviously the tree

00:47 is flowering and when will this particular one sort of become a banana I suppose, when

00:51 will it bear fruit? Well the trouble is it's too late in the year for this to happen, if

00:56 it's happened in April/May you could be able to eat the bananas but at the moment this

01:02 is about as far as it's going to go and of course the tree will die after it flowers,

01:08 it doesn't produce any more but it does produce other plants like this one over here, that's

01:15 all come from this one. So all I've got to do is, well this one I won't need to protect

01:21 for the winter but the following one, this one, I will cut all the leaves off in autumn

01:27 and then wrap it up in a fleece and waterproof polythene and hopefully that might fruit next

01:35 year. Absolutely, thank you very very much. That's alright, pleasure.

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