Growing Bananas in -30C in Canada in a Passive Solar Greenhouse.

We Did It! Bananas grown & harvested in northern Canada. It was -54 Celsius🥶 (-65 Fahrenheit) last week. Gardening zone 3. Passive Solar Greenhouse almost entirely heated by the sun, designed by Dean at Arkopia.

Everything you wanted to know about growing bananas in a greenhouse.

We have received no government grants or financing for any aspect of our operations.

#homestead #greenhouse #farmlife #bananasinthesnow #bananas #snow #winter

Like, Comment, Subscribe and follow @ArkopiaYouTube We are experts in preparedness, homesteading, sustainability, high efficient construction, passive solar technology, deep winter greenhouses, freeze drying & other food preservation, economics, and small sustainable food production.

We are the inventors of the Best Selling Smoothie on amazon: Arkopia Freeze Dried Smoothies. We are also a small, multifaceted farm located in Saskatchewan, Canada where we are striving to provide our hyper-local community with food (and flowers), direct to customers off our farm.

[PeterSedesse]

I lived in Nicaragua and had a few hundred banana plants for about 5 years. What I learned from the locals regarding pups. You only ever want to have 4 stalks at any one time, and in fact most of the time you only want 3, and you want them to be staggered in size. You don't want any two of your stalks to be the same size. So for example, you will have your tallest stalk with developing bananas, your 2nd stalk, and then your 3rd stalk. Keep eliminating your 4th stalk until such a time that your 3rd stalk is pretty big ( I waited for 6 feet). So then when the 3rd stalk hits 6', you let a new stalk come up, but shortly after that you will be harvesting your bananas from the tallest stalk, and then immediately cut down that stalk and go back to having only 3 stalks. If you do it that way, your 2nd stalk will be flowering while the 1st stalk is finishing off the bananas. You can be harvesting about 2.5 times per year. All of those extra small stalks are just stealing energy from your 2nd stalk and preventing it from flowering. Just keep chop/dropping that 4th stalk until the 3rd stalk gets big. There should be a mess of dead stalks under your plant, and once you harvest the bananas, cut that stalk also and let is decay under the plant. This creates a lot of mulch and the stalks are almost entirely water.

The other thing is to learn to recognize the difference between stalks, and hijos(children). If you think of indeterminate tomatoes... a stalk will be like a branch, but a hijo is a sucker. The way you can tell the difference is at the very base of the plant. A stalk will develop out of the same base as your other stalks, but an hijo will develop it's own base. So if it is all stalks, the top view of the base will look more like an 0 (an ellipse), but if it is a hijo, it will look more like a number 8. Hijos should always be removed. You can take a shovel and basically split between the number 8 and create a separate plant if you want to give it away, or you can just dig it up and drop it to die. I never really counted, but I would guess that about 50% of the time something comes up, it will be an hijo, and 50% a stalk. Hijos can get really out of hand if you don't dig up the base of it, and they just take so much energy/space away from your main plant. For instance, we had areas that had thousands of wild banana plants, but the hijos developed so close and so often to the parent, that you never see wild bananas develop, just the plant. I think banana plants want to propagate using hijos, and producing actual fruit is a secondary means to reproduce. Kinda like if you don't trellis and prune indeterminate tomatoes, you may never get fruit as the suckers will just develop roots and grow and compete with the original plant.

[BouncingTribbles]

I've been hesitant to farm in Canada, for a variety of reasons, but a greenhouse like this seems like a dream come true. Congrats brother.

[abbyiyer]

As a canadian im so proud you have shown to the world where there is a will there is a way❤❤❤❤

[roselewis]

Please show us the ins and outs of how you built your passive solar greenhouse. What considerations you made, how you figured out how to angle it from the sun, what you use for solar mass, what you built out of and all of it please!

[lyndalovesraccoons]

..." it warmed up abit, its only -22°C ...

caaaanada🎶🎵

[russellwood]

As an Irish Alberton, I just like to congratulate you. That’s amazing growing tropical fruits in the middle of a Canadian winter that’s absolutely amazing. They give people Nobel peace prizes for crapper reasons than that. Growing tropical fruits in Canada in the middle of winter so they don’t have to travel from tropical places we can have Canadian bananas yeah that’s definitely the Nobel peace prize in my book.. Bananas split sundaes all year round.

[deanorr]

This is how tropical fruit in Canada should be grown! It is crazy to ship fruit 1000's or tens of 1000's of KM! No brainer for improving food security and reducing travel costs/ logistics/ pollution.

[scottfraser]

Truly amazing 👏. We should be doing this across Canada especially in the far remote communities up north

[dougwarren]

This is awesome! With the amount of land we have here in Saskatchewan there's no reason we can't have more of these and stop relying of goods coming out of country.

[redshedacres]

I'm old enough to be your mother, but we are kindred spirits. When you talked about wrapping your Tilapia in a banana leaf with herbs, your face and passion of what you are doing resounded with my soul. So glad your generation get to enhance this science with the know how you have acquired with your talent and trade. Well done you.

[TheChapExp]

We need a million more of you, in Canada! :)

[SenoraSenora-ux]

Awesome, finally Canadians can have fresh food year round ❤👍🕯

[sharonsomers]

What a beautiful greenhouse! You must be so beyond proud you not only built it, but are creating food for your family, and you know exactly where it came from, what sprays if any are on it. What a dream setup. Just lovely.

[kathyjames]

💡 I imagine all the closet mad-scientist passions re-awakening in the hearts of guerrilla gardeners of the North with their impossible dreams and fresh possibilities that your videos have inspired! Thanks for sharing… Blessings from Manitoba 🦬

[can-cruiser]

Incredible.. Great accomplishment.. Greetings from Alberta...

[revk]

Damn! I am so impressed and this has given me “food for though” for building a better greenhouse for growing in Canada. Well done!!!

[nadinehanchar]

WOW! CONGRATULATIONS BEAUTIFULLY DONE.. ❤️ 👏 ❤️

[thewitchyprepper]

proud of you and your Canadian bananas Arkopia!!! Amazing work!! 😍😍😍

[lb]

Awesome and Very Impressive! Good on You!! I'm in BC and wish you continued success with your labour of love!

[chargermopar]

I don't eat bananas but I grow them and give them to friends. It's good to know that when I move from south Florida I could take my banana plant collection with me and grow them inside a greenhouse.