My daughters explain how to preserve your bananas and more in the video above.
Betsy: Welcome to the 2nd video in our "Fruit in Our Yard" series.
By the way, our yard is in the charming beach town of Puerto Armuelles, Panama.
We are producing these videos in alphabetic order.
Join us as my daughters show you the Bananas In Our Yard.
[I'm Betsy from Living in Panama, the place for information and advice on being an expat in Panama. Interested? Click subscribe, and hit the bell. So you don't miss a video.]
Skylar: These are the bananas in our yard. They're a little past their prime on the tree.
We've been picking them slowly.
Normally, if you wanted to preserve the entire bunch and ripen them at your leisure, you would chop it here and hang it from a sort of a rafter or any high place you have. Then put a bag around it to protect it from the birds that might want to get at it before you.
Blaise: And what you can also do is, you can leave actually them on the tree and get some mesh bags to cover it.
And as you can see, some ripen at different times.
These are very small, just starting. These are green and these towards the top get more sun and are ripe. Like here, they are ready on this side.
Skylar: Yes. These here have been all picked and some of them have been eaten by birds.
Blaise: Like these and that.
Skylar: This is what happens when you don't preserve the bunch. So if you wanted to preserve it, as we said, you put a mesh bag around, either on the tree, or take it off and hang it somewhere for it to ripen.
[Note: you can use plastic or any other opaque bag to cover ripening bananas in order to keep birds from eating them.]
They usually ripen better off the tree actually.
Blaise: And we can show you one is still green. It has not been covered, over in our front yard.
Skylar: Okay, so this is across the yard from the earlier bananas that we showed you. But these are not quite ready to be picked or even for the birds to want them.
It's quite a beautiful bunch, honestly.
Blaise: As you can see, up there, it is starting to ripen a little bit on the higher branches.
Betsy: Where? Oh, yeah.
Blaise: You can see a little yellow. And so that is normally the time you should probably start bagging.
Actually, if you remove some of the leaves above it, it can help it as well.
Betsy: Help it what?
Skylar: Ripen more quickly of course.
Blaise: And grow.
Skylar: Yeah.
Blaise: And in the next video we'll probably be showing you how to use bananas and plantains in dishes.
Skylar: Yes, how to cook your bananas or plantains - for beginners.
Skylar & Blaise: Bye. Thank you for watching. Subscribe. And like. And share with anyone who might be interested. And click the notification bell. Have fun.
Betsy: Please click the link below for more information about Puerto Armuelles. Thanks for watching.
Our next "Fruit In Our Yard" video will feature the cashew tree.
