#1 ◱ 29 Jan 2013 - The rain made the banana plant lean way over. We grabbed the end of the clump and pulled it down far enough to cut the stalk. The clump was VERY heavy for Don to carry, but he got it into the house.

#2 ◱ You can see that the top bananas have already started to turn yellow. Two days ago I stared at the clump trying to decided if it was time to take it down. The top ones were lighting, but there was definitely no yellow ones.

#3 ◱ You can see that the birds helped themself to part of one banana. We got nine whorls, and a total of 140 bananas. Numbers of bananas per whorl: 14, 14, 20 (2nd to top on clump when growing), 14, 14, 14, 16, 16, 18 (very top - yellow ones)

#4 ◱ They weren't as large as some crops we've had that just looked like the ones in the stores. We're not sure what determines length. The was a "keiki" plant off of the first one two years ago.

#5 ◱ 4 Mar 2013 - We're going to take this clump down before it turns yellow like the last one.

#6 ◱ We left the flower on the bottom.

#7 ◱ Here's the clump a little closer.

#8 ◱ We invited the Merryweathers and the Marcums over for our "cut the banana plant down party."

#9 ◱ The second oldest Marcum girl got the honors of cutting the plant down.

#10 ◱ The rest tried to "catch" it and Stephanie was the one that got to pull it down.

#11 ◱ It's down.

#12 ◱ Now to cut the bunch away from the plant

#13 ◱ It is woodier than the stalk, so it is actually harder.

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#20 ◱ It was pretty heavy to carry.

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#22 ◱ It took two boys to carry it.

#23 ◱ Then we cut the whorls apart.

#24 ◱ How many whorls will the bunch have?

#25 ◱ Jared Marcum got into cutting the whorls apart.

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#29 ◱ Lois is showing off the little whorl that got one half banana on it. It also has another whorl on the stalk.

#30 ◱ Jared Marcum is doing a great job.

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#33 ◱ So we got nine whorls on the bunch.

#34 ◱ We had to count multiple times.

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#38 ◱ We counted 14, 14, 14, 20, 18, 16, 16, 14, 14 for a total of 140.

#39 ◱ Kind of weird that we had the same number of bananas as the last bunch had.

#40 ◱ Well, we actually had a 1/2 size one more. :-)

#41 ◱ So we had a good time.

#42 ◱ Each family got to take a clump home.

#43 ◱ We'll see how long it takes to "ripen."

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