BANANA FARMING IN THE CANARY ISLANDS.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXIX, Issue 3648, 26 January 1899, Page 2

BANANA FARMING IN THE CANARY ISLANDS.

“ The farmer who grows the bananas is, nine times out of ten, a tenant, and himself a worker amongst the plants. His holding may be as small as half an acre ; ■ it usually runs to about two acres, but, anyway, 12 acres is the largest banana farm in Grand Canary, and this is uncommon. With-the land he rents his water; that is to say ; - the landowner who lets, the ground guarantees to supply water to the plants during so many hours per week. If the landowner’s own supply of water holds out, well and good; but if not he must buy and pay the market price. The banana plants must hate the water when they want it, or otherwise they will die, and the loss will be great. The cost of' these water rights is sometimes surprising; £7 10s an hour is quite a common figure. But holders of water are people who have to look out for large fluctuations in their stock, for it is not at all an unusual occurrence for £7 10s water to slump to 8s merely bn the depression caused by an hour’s rain squall. Naturally all kinds of Varieties of bananas have been tried in the Canary Islands, and new experiments are continually going on. There is the tell silver banana, which runs to 25ft high; but this taes too much out of the soil, and its fruit, moreover, is small. There are other kinds, oaqh with its own special', fault. But what is aimed at is a tree’ that will grow the largest possible bunch of fruit in the quickest, time, with the least hurt to the soil ; 'arid this is arrived at with, a species of plant which sends its uppermost leaves rarely so high as ,10ft. above , the ground. A newly-planted banana garden is one of the most uncomely spots imaginable. The husbandman yokes a pair of cows to a primitive wooden plough, and scratches up the soft, dry loam to the accompaniment of much cigarette smoking. The banana being the oldest cultivated plant in the -world—it belongs to the lily by the way-—has quite.outgrown.all natural means ■of reproduction. Adam may have raised if from seed, but to-day it has not the least vestige of seed anywhere within its; economics. And so the Canary farmer dibbles in old .banana roots or slips, and from the flanks, of these the young plants soon sprout and grow. But the great feature, of a banana garden is the irrigation arrangements. Between each row of plants there is a gutter ,in the soft earth ; across the end of each of, these series of gutters there is another gutter which’is fed from others, which in tuna; draw from the main water supply. In the , stowage tank at the head the women folk wash their clothes, and if any water drains , through to the other side of the garderi, then they, feel quite free to use that for dripkingi purposes. The banana reproduces by siibdivision, and one “ house ” or root, may have as many as eight heads, each head being practically a coiffpiete tree, which will during its lifetime produce ;■ one bunch of fruit.”—From Cutcliffo Hyne’s “ Banana Farming in the Canaries,” in “ Windsor Magazine.” , -