Harvesting and Managing Plantains | Tropical Permaculture Backyard Homestead

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In today’s vlog, I show you how I’m harvesting and managing plantains on my tropical permaculture backyard homestead in Luquillo, Puerto Rico. Plantains (called platano here in Puerto Rico) are a great, long-term perennial crop that takes about a year to produce. Bananas and plantains are in the same family and are actually herbs, not trees. The trunk is actually a pseudostem, and each plantain “tree” will only produce one fruit. When it’s time to harvest, the entire stem is cut to the ground, the plantains harvested, and then the trunk cut up into easy-to-manage pieces to be used as bulky mulch to protect the soil in the tropics. Bulky mulch works better than thin mulch layers in tropical climates because the decomposition cycles are so fast.

After the plantains are harvested, I take the time to leave a clean cut on the trunk that will collect the sap from the plant, which will help protect the plant from disease. Once the producing stem is cut, a new one replaces it to be the leader, and the production cycle continues. Typically you want to manage plantain plants to have only 3 stems at any one time- one flowering/fruiting, one medium height trunk to replace the one that’s harvested, and one small one to take both of their places long term. Any more than that will just compete and cause the fruiting and flowering to take longer, so it’s best to either cut any other stems back or dig them and replant them elsewhere.

Harvesting Plantains and managing plantain trees is easy, and hopefully this video will inspire you to get out there and get growing. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them below. Thanks for watching today’s vlog on my tropical permaculture backyard homestead. Until next time, have a good one!