I Cut Down All My Bananas… Here’s Why!

In this video, I remove all our banana plants to make room for expanding our vegetable garden.

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0:00 Introduction
0:40 Vegetable Garden Expansion
7:36 Using an Electric STIHL Chainsaw
11:31 Chicken Breakout
12:57 Removing Banana Sucker Pup
13:37 Moving Chicken Tractor
28:29 Hens Eating Big Spider
31:07 Finish Banana Removal
36:04 Refurbished Raised Garden Bed
42:21 Incredible Conclusion

[Music] Oh, good day. It’s about time you turned up. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ve got to cut down these banana trees. Why am I getting rid of perfectly good banana trees? And then I want to move our chicken tractor from that raised garden bed, which they’ve completely decimated, into this big long one behind me so they can get stuck into these weeds and turn this into a desert so that I can get planting into it. Anyway, we don’t have any time to spare, so let’s get into it. is expand this vegetable garden down this way towards you. That means I’ve got to get rid of the banana trees, but I’m not happy with them anyway. The ones on your left, they are okay. They’re dwarfs. But the ones on the right here are too tall. I don’t know what happened. I did cut down all the tall ones. And I thought that I had got rid of all the roots. When I planted the dwarf banana trees in there, somehow the tall ones overtook them. And now all I’ve got is larger varieties. [Music] I find one of these hand saws, well, not that, that’s a piece of banana, but one of these hand saws pretty good. They’re very good at cutting through bananas. I know you can use a machete if you want to swing that thing around. A little bit more dangerous if you ask me, but for me, I just like using this here. Cuts through nice and easy. I’ll just switch tools for a bit. I like this hedger to get through, you know, just tidy up weeds and things like that. A weed whacker is good, but it’s noisy. Even the electrical ones throw stuff at you where this doesn’t. So, if I’m doing just a little bit of trimming, like I do want to do now, just trim around the outside of this overgrown weeded garden bed because I’m leaving the weeds in there for the hens to clean up. They’re going to eat it. They’re going to get good nutrition out of it and they’re going to eat all the seeds. I just want to be able to get around and work around it. [Music] That’s what I mean. Does a good job just to knock the tops down. Whereas a whipper would just throw mud all around the place. It throw plant matter all over me. And I just not in the mood for it. I’ve just want to knock this down enough so I can get to my compost bays. It’s been wet and muddy for a long time. Having said that, it is still slowly drying out. Okay, good. Now, let’s start filling this up. Probably even start with some of this [Music] bananas that never made it. You’ll be surprised at how much I’m going to be able to fit in this bar here. I’ll be able to pile it right up here and it’ll condense down and provide us with three or four wheelbarrows full of compost probably in about yeah 5 6 months if that [Applause] Yeah, we’ve made good inroads in the last few hours and I’m I’m going to like it. I think I’m going to like it opened up. Well, this is the second day I’ve been tackling these banana trees, or banana plants to be exact, and it’s proving to be a very physical and long type of project. It’s just that, you know, cutting them up is not too hard. Banana trees, plants are soft and easy to cut up, but they’re juicy. The sap isn’t very good. It can irritate your skin. So, you got to be a little careful not to get it all over yourself. It’s almost unavoidable, though. And there’s just a lot of them. And they’re quite heavy because they’re full of water. And so you got to cut them up into small pieces and then throw them in. I’ve used two compost bays. I think I’ll be able to fit them all the rest of this into those two compost bays and then I’ll cover them over and they won’t take too long to start breaking down. I don’t want to make too much work for myself. If I don’t have to dig them out, I won’t. I’ll just build a garden bed over the top of them and then they’ll just rot in the base of that garden bed. Um sometimes you get the suckers will grow through even a few feet of soil. So I have to be a bit careful of that. Uh and keep cutting them back until they run out of energy and die off. Um but otherwise that’s what I’m doing. Trying to cut them down as far as possible. And I’ve moved away from my hand saw to my steel battery saw. It’s still only a small one still, but I’m not sponsored by Still, but hey, still if you would like to look, fine. I’m I’m I’m all ears. Um, actually, there’s a bit of a story with I’ll go get it for you. I really love working with this. Um, I I’ll What is it? It’s the mini uh roll amatic E. I can’t remember the It’s AK30. Oh, that’s the battery. The MSA70C and still did give this to me. Uh, and it was because I went on Charlie Albone’s podcast. Um, it was probably on Instagram as well as YouTube. Really nice to be invited on Charlie’s podcast. He’s a good guy. He’s a absolute pro. He’s a horiculturalist. Uh, better homes and gardens. If you’re not familiar with the name, you would have seen him on Better Homes and Gardens, putting in plants and doing all sorts of um outdoor renos. He’s quite famous down in Melbourne for how he does his displays at the garden show every year there. So, it was nice to have a a chat with him. And part of that, I didn’t ask for payment at all. I was, you know, it was just nice enough to have a chat with him on his show. But lo and behold, uh they contacted me and said, “Hey, would you like one of these uh battery operated saws?” Um and I went, “Yeah, yeah, of course.” And so they uh I went down to my local steel shop and got it. And it’s I’ve been really loving using it because it’s it’s so quiet. You don’t have that rumble of noise in the background constantly. Uh, and it’s very good. [Music] It’s really good at cutting things. And the battery lasts ages. I’ve been using this for several hours now and it’s still got 3/4 of a battery left. And so, like I said, I’m not sponsored or anything, but um, I do like it and I do use it a lot. And it’s very easy to operate. It’s very easy to like you don’t need tools to tighten up the saw or the chain. I mean, um, and if you get gunk in it, like you do when you’re cutting banana plants, get a lot of gunk in it, you can easily just take the side casing off, clean it up, and put it back on. Uh, change the battery out when this one finally goes flat. I I actually purchased, didn’t come with two batteries, but I purchased a second one. and uh yeah, I’m really loving using it. So, thanks Charlie. Uh it’s long time overdue. The podcast I did with him was months and months ago. Um so yeah, I appreciate that. And also still, but yeah, I’ll keep going. And I’m just finding that this is a little bit bigger than my little hands saw. And it just chops through a little bit faster because it was getting long and tedious. Why don’t I get a backhoe in here and finish this job off like or a small bit of machinery? Well, it’s still very muddy underground and I don’t want to have like mud strips from my driveway all the way down past the veggie garden and turn this into a big mud patch uh for it to have to rejuvenate all over again. So, I’m sure it would tear it up no end, even a small machine in here. So, I’m happy to do this by hand and and then build over the top of it. Had a breakout. Hey, you’re not ready for that bed yet, girls? What he is doing to me? H. Now you won’t be able to get back in. Come on. Do I just open this up and let them roam around while I’m out here? As long as you remember to go back home. Chickens, they’re so cheeky. They get to know you and they don’t get scared of you and then they, you know, take liberties, like finding the smallest gap to poke through and then everyone follows. I have been saving some of the pups because I don’t want to go and buy more banana plants again. And I want to keep some of these varieties. I got to make sure that these varieties are the dwarf ones. So, I’m taking them from this end. And I I know they’re either a red ducatti or a blue java. It’s just a matter of getting a spade and cutting through the parent plant and then digging it out like that. There’s a little pup there. See if I can not knock that out. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] So this is the third day. Not that I’ve worked on this for 3 days straight, like 10 hours a day. I mean, I’ve been doing other things, editing videos, doing normal life and all that, but I’ve been working oh, several hours and over the span of 3 days. That’s why you’ve seen me change clothes a little bit. I haven’t quite finished cleaning up all these banana plants just yet. That should only take me half an hour or so this morning. But before I do that, I want to get the hens into their new raised garden bed because the old one is depleted. I let them all out yesterday. I can’t be bothered trying to pull all that bird knitting down and patch it all up and then keep those hens in that small raised garden bed after they’ve completely depleted it. And it’s done its job and I know they’re bored. So, hence why they broke out like a prison break. So, I’ll put them in this raised garden bed here. And I’ll need to net that first. I got some old plastic netting that I’ve had for I reckon over maybe 15 years. I got it ages ago. It’s really good quality stuff. And it was something I was triing as temporary free range netting down the back. It’ll be good to use in this situation because I can easily just roll it out, cut it to size. So, that’s what I’ll do now. I’ll use some of my garden stakes because they’ve got prongs on the end and I can fold it over that and I think that’ll work better and more stable. But I will fold it out so I can cut it to size. It’s just a matter of rolling it around. And I think the garden bed. The hens are keen to get out this morning. Of course they are. I might just have a little bit of overlap just in case I need it. So easy to work with this plastic stuff. Very strong but easy to cut with the scissors. I think this will be better than the bird netting that I’ve got them in here because it’s just a bit stronger. The bird netting the hens work out that they can sort of break it if they hit it enough. These are just stainless garden stakes that I got made up. Which way will I put them in? Maybe that way, I think. Give them more purchase. And if I put enough of them in, it should be strong enough to not collapse in. About a meter apart, I reckon. We’ll see how we go. Five each side. sort of fold it over and then that’ll reach over to the other side and that’ll give that there so that it can’t it’s not easy for a predator to get in through the day. I’ve used some piping and those posts to go across. They don’t have to be neat. They’re just holding up to give it a bit of structure across ways, you know, like some beams. But it’s it’s nothing spectacular. The whole thing about this, it’s supposed to be put up in 5 to 10 minutes, which it is. And as long as it’s predator proof for daytime, which it will be, that’s all I’m interested. Uh, and I just want to keep the hens in mainly as well and make sure they don’t escape and nothing can pick them off easily. And now I’m just going along and zip tying these the top bits together as it’s folded over. Giving it a little bit of tension, pinching it together like that. And then just a simple zip tie. I’ve said it in previous videos, our veggie garden is fairly well occupied most of the time. And you never see predators coming into our open space here. You might see them in the orchard. You see them down the back where it’s away from the house, but you don’t see predators here in the veggie garden unless perhaps at night when people are asleep. This netting can naturally just fall over onto those posts. Again, I’m not really caring that this is untidy. This is I just want it effective. This is scraps from out of the shed. Stuff that I’ve had in the shed for a long time. Finally using it. That’s why I hoard stuff for is for these types of projects. Now, I’ll use some of these larger clamps to clamp the bottom of the mesh down to the garden bed. The mesh, the garden bed, and the base of some of those stakes just to keep them upright. Yeah, that’ll do. Clamp them down like that. And now you’ve got the three of them all in one. And I just keep going around and just stretch it out and clamp it as I go. And then just have one final last check to make sure that it’s all wired tight. And then I’ll have a little access point I think about here for the chicken tractor to go into. I’ll have their entrance here. So, I’ll just This is their little ramp that I made up. It’s just a pot hanger clamped onto some mesh and that’s where their ramp will go. Hooked over to the the chicken mobile chicken tractor. Go into here. And so, it’s about that wide. All right. Cool. There. So, I’ll cut it off from there and I’ll open it up. So, let’s start it. Let’s start it. Yeah, that’ll work. There. And here. And across. The hens probably have no idea what’s going on. [Music] It is a little bit physical I have to say, but it’s not that bad considering you got 13 hens in here. Couple more over the quotota, but it’s only temporary. So, um, pretty good to be able to move all that with water and the whole thing. Let’s get that in a little closer. Just this side a bit more. Nearly spot on. that there. And then this will go through there and hook over. [Music] Is it long enough? Yeah, that should be good. [Music] So, I’ll hook that in there for now. [Music] That’s it. They’re picking at the door. They’re very keen to get out. So, I better get cracking on this. Uh, so it’s just a matter of then clamping this on. Easy peasy through that. Making sure that it’s nice and tight so that the birds aren’t going to try to squeeze through cuz they will if they if they think they can. And then then the sides can come over here like this. Or I could even just use a few zip ties. Actually, I might do that just temporarily. That saves my clamps before I get some more new ones. Just don’t want them. These girls, if they can squeeze out a gap, they will, cuz they’re getting very clever at wanting to explore more areas. So, let’s make sure that that can’t happen. But this little cage setup that I’ve got with the mesh works really well to be able to fix anything to it. There we go. Will they get get through them? Maybe they might get through that. And then I’ve got to give them some some food and water as well, which I haven’t had this morning. They’ll probably be out. Look, there you go. There’s that beautiful entrance there. Now, I just need to make sure I can raise the door. And I use this here to hold the door up for now because I haven’t got uh a proper door lock. Let’s lift that up. Put that down there. [Music] That there. And it’s all about just utilizing what you’ve got to be able to make things work. And there you go. So, they’ll probably be hungry. I’ll go and get them some feed. Sprinkle a bit of feed in here initially and fill up their feeder here. Get them some extra water and then they’ll be way on their way. But they’ve got food in here to start eating anyway. So, I’m not too worried about food. There’ll be plenty of worms and grasshoppers and bugs and flowers and weed seeds to eat. So, I’m not too worried. They’ve seen it. Bang. There it goes. Oh, they’re after it. Oh, it’s a feast. Someone’s got the prize. Yes, that’s mine. She reckons. Uh, no. You’re not going to give that to anyone. [Laughter] How is she going to eat that in peace? Oh, look. There they Oh, one’s got a leg. The other one’s got the body. Oh, she’s going into the hut. Oh, good on her. Good on her. I bet she’s devouring that in there. The mother hen’s gone in. Oh no, she’s still come out with it. She didn’t even get peace in there. Can she? Oh, there you go. No, you just got to gobble that down fast. That’s all you can do. Gobble it down. Go on. Oh, she’s doing well to hold it. doing so well. They could be pecked out from any side and she’s she’s kept it all this time. Go on. Go in the hut. Need it. Go on. It’s yours. Good girl. Go on. Eat it quick before they come in. You didn’t drop it. You did not drop it. She dropped it. She dropped it through the mesh. Can you believe it? She dropped it somewhere through the mesh down there. I hate spiders, so I’m not going to go looking for it. Hasn’t taken them long to work their way through the whole bed. And speaking of working our way, I’ve got to continue on working my way cutting the rest of these bananas down to ground level so that I can make use of this space here. So, I’ll do that. Then, what we’ll do is finish up with that last garden bed. I’ll put the the remainder of the poop that’s on the ground there that was underneath the old chicken tractor that was sitting in the old location. I’ll put all that poop on top of the bed and we’ll water that in. Give that bed a bit of a refurb, bit of a mulch. And then that’s that bed done. Yeah, I suppose this is a good time to point out that growing them in clumps as opposed to growing them in lines like they do at the farms. Honestly, the way they do it at the farm is the proper way to do it where they’ve spaced them out about every 3 m or so, or a couple of meters between each tree or each plant. They’ll let one plant grow. They usually have a sucker, one sucker next to it, and then they cut that plant down once it flowers and fruits. They get the bunch and then they cut that one down. Well, it dies anyway. And then they let the sucker grow again. and they just maintain those rows like that without growing them in bushes like this. But that’s all well and good if you’ve got a farm and plenty of space to space out your banana trees plants. But if you don’t, this is an effective way to grow bananas. Let them bunch up. And when you bunch them up like that, you can cut them back down or let them the old ones fall over. throw them back into the big bunch here on the ground chopped up and they will act as a mulch and also as a compost and feed those new banana plants coming through. Check this out. This is an old banana tree that has fallen over and look at it. It’s composting in place here. There’s the core of it. Look at what it’s turning into. This dark compost. That’s the stuff that’s gold in your garden. It doesn’t even have to be, you know, in the dirt or on the ground or in a in a pile just falling over and it just naturally composts down, feeds itself. The thing about growing them in clumps like this is it saves space, but you will have the banana plants competing with each other. That means if you’re not feeding them enough, you’re going to get small bunches of bananas or they’re not going to grow very well at all. So, you need to keep cutting them back, keep feeding them heaps, make sure they got plenty of water so that you’re going to get the fruit off them if you grow them in clumps this way and saving space. Otherwise, if you’ve got the space, plant them out separate to each other so that they’ve got plenty of space to be able to grow properly. [Music] [Music] And hopefully that top like will act like a cap and die off and then trap that shoot from coming up through the middle. It won’t stop other shoots from coming up from the sides. But if I put a garden bit over this, for example, or cover it, that’ll stop that. Heat. [Music] [Music] Heat. [Music] Okay. So, now I’m just going to clean up this bed, which isn’t much. Just pull out the expended weeds, the stems really that the chickens didn’t pull out themselves. It’s hard to find some of the stems. They’ve eaten them right back down. Sort of got a feel for them. And now I’m going to rake up the poop. In the future, what I’m thinking of doing is getting some shade cloth and just tying it underneath the chicken tractor. And that can act as a collection for the poop. Just sort of have it suspended underneath there like a trampoline catching the poop. Easy enough then to it’ll probably dry out on there as well. And then it’s easy enough to then put it in the bed without having to rake it up off the lawn. And I’ll be able to gather more of it and then I can just wash out that shade cloth and put it straight back on. But that’s the concept anyway. It’ll make it much easier than doing this. But anyway, for now, this is what I have to do. It’s probably a another bucket of manure here. And uh I really would be mad not to use it. You don’t want to just leave it on the lawn. I remember in my early days when we used to have the chicken tractor before we made our chicken pen and had the chicken freeranging area and all it did was fertilize the grass. Yeah, you could put it around the orchard, but it was a bit hard to maneuver around the orchard, the bigger one. And you know, it’s just a waste of fertilizer on the grass. And speaking of grass, because you’re raking it up off the grass and I’m going to have some of this grass in with it, but hopefully there won’t be any runners in there to to get into the bed. But I’m going to mulch it heavily anyway. So that should be okay. But yeah, I’m definitely going to make a better way of doing this. But I can uh certainly see how much manure is in here. And it’s going to make this garden bed very happy indeed. And now I’m going to water this in. This will break up the poop and it’ll distribute it into the uh upper surface, the top soil of the bed nice and evenly. Just break it up a bit. And because it’s so raw, it’s good just to water it in like this anyway. just kind of weakens it a bit. And that distribution means it will adapt and break down into the bed better. So that in about 3 to 4 weeks, we can start planting in this bed just in time for spring. And there unlikely will be a need for any extra fertilizer for this bed at all. Really good water in. I mean crazy water in. You can smell the ura and how raw it is. Just washing it into every corner of the bed. Washing it through into the top. soil. That way the bacteria will start breaking it down and utilizing it and turning it into a good sort of product for the what the plants can use. It’s a real good inoculent for the soil as well. This is just a sugar cane mulch. I’ll put this on nice and liberally. Nice and thick. I think we can do the whole bale. This is just going to add to the bed as well as it breaks down. It’s going to shelter that manure, make that fertilizer not dry out and get pulled down into the surface by worms and microbes. all under the shelter of this mulch. And then by the time I come to use this bed for our spring veggies, it’s going to be amazing. And this is such a simple way to make a really fantastic and fertile and rich bed for your food crops. Well, I’m really happy with this project and how it’s turned out. It was three days of, you know, fair work. But, you know, that’s the way it is when you’re doing self-sufficiency and DIY and backyard work. It’s very satisfying though. It’s good for me. And look, I could do with losing a few pounds, to be honest. So, this type of manual labor gets me off the desk and gets me away from editing and gets a really much needed job done. And I’ve been meaning to get this banana job done for a long time. It was driving me bananas. Anyway, I’ve got some small banana plants, some pups to be able to transplant around the area. Not sure exactly where I’m going to put them yet. Maybe I’ll scatter them throughout the orchard and probably turn them into singulars. Just one tree with a pup coming up and just keep changing them over like that and not let them get out of control. I think that’s the way that I’ll manage my bananas from now on in the future. And as for the chicken run, well, they’re not all going to be with this many hens, but I do like the way it’s working at the moment. It is pretty cool. I almost starting to think, did I really need to build a big pen down the back to house these hens? I could have just stuck with this and just kept them in our veggie garden and just kept going like that. But I think that it probably would be best for them to be able to use that freeranging area that we’ve built with the electric fence and everything that’s behind you and a whole new pen away from the wet and the dampness. And that’s what the plan is. I’ve already purchased it, so that’s what the plan is going to be in the end. And then we will use this setup for four or five hens to visit the veggie garden when required. I think that’ll work really well. Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure you give me a thumbs up in the and also drop a comment. Let me know what you think. Have you got any ideas that could improve this setup? Don’t forget about my book. You can still pre-order it. Shipping starts very soon for Australia and then September the US and everywhere else. So, you can pre-order it and and skip the rush. But by you purchasing, it just helps keep this channel moving and it keeps me being able to do what I love doing, and that’s sharing my self-sufficiency projects with you. Thanks a lot for watching. Bye for now. Cheers.