News
Fruit harvest at the college
Scott Wagar
04/10/2012
It might be early spring in North Dakota, but at Dakota College at Bottineau’s greenhouse its banana tree has given the gift of fruit with a number of bananas that are not only sweet to the horticulturalist staff and students’ eyes, but to their taste buds, too.
Diann Beckman, instructor of horticulture at Dakota College at Bottineau, stated that the college’s banana tree this spring produced just over eight dozen bananas.
“This year, three stems had fruit,” Beckman said. “There are between 25 and 40 bananas per stem. So, we had around 100 bananas that are approximately four inches long.
Beckman added the banana tree has a long gestation period for the fruit it produces.
“The banana has a rhizome type root system and it shoots out stems from the rhizome. It takes between one and a half years, to two years, to grow. Once the fruit ripens we cut down the stem to allow smaller shoots that have started to grow with more room,’ she said. “The banana producing stems have already been removed from the last batch, and the stems that are on there are one year old and about four feet tall. We should have one or two clusters of bananas again next spring from these.”
The college’s banana tree is believed to be 60 to 70 years old and it is a very resilient tree, especially when it comes to moving it around campus.
“We are not exactly sure how old the tree is, but it has been in the greenhouse since either the 50s or 60s. I know it has been here quite a long time. When I went to college back in the 70s it was here,” Beckman said. “We moved it in the early 80s from the old greenhouse on the east side of the college to the new greenhouse on the west side of campus. It grew in the ground in the greenhouse from 1984 until 2007 when we moved it into a four-foot wide by four feet high redwood planter, which Alvis Beckman built for the plant.
“As for care, we really don’t do anything special for the tree. It gets watered once every seven to ten days, and fertilized at each watering in the summer,” Beckman continued to say. “It does need to be grown on the dry side. If we keep it too wet it will rot. Mike Beier, our greenhouse technician, myself and students care for all the plants in the greenhouse.”
Once the bananas are picked, the students who care and maintain the tree get to enjoy the fruit of their labor so-to-speak.
“The students eat most of them,” Beckman said. “These bananas have a short shelf life as they ripen on the plant. They are not picked green like those in the store, and they have a completely different texture. They are smooth and almost creamy.”
Along with the banana tree, the greenhouse on DCB’s campus also houses a number of other tropical fruits, which includes an orange tree that recently produced fruit.
“We have lemon and lime trees, plus a miniature orange tree, which Gordon Wettlaufer started from seed and donated it to the college several years ago. The miniature orange tree is very tart and not considerable desirable,” Beckman said. “All the trees have produced fruit. We have been picking limes all winter and just picked the last of the current crop last week. Now that the fruit is gone, it will rest for a bit and then come into bloom again and set-up a new crop. It takes three to five months for the fruit to mature, so by fall we will have a new crop of limes. The others aren’t as prolific as the lime. The lime is amazing and I’m sure we get more than 50 limes a year from it.
In North Dakota, the state might have winter five to seven months out of the year, but inside DCB’s greenhouse the tropical trees is year round and pleasing to all students and staff members, especially when the tropical plants are producing.