Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1908-04-12

rying from ten to thirty thousand punches are
landing daily at New Orleans, Mobile Phiade
phia, New York and Boston. From their farms at
Bocas del Toro alone, the United Fruit Company
is shipping three or four such cargoes a week.
There are perhaps few great industries, espec
tally in agricultural lines about which the general
public knows so little as that of raising bananas
Many have vague mental picture of a grove of
trees which live year after year and bear bunch
after bunch of bananas, and we often hear the
desire expressed to the fruit rpening upon the
trees and to taste the luscious fruit that had rip
ened as nature intended l have seen thousands
OF acres of bananas but never tree with ripe
bunch upon it. In fact, it is considered the
pardonable sin to allow bunch to ripen upon the
tree.
The banana tree springs from great bulk
somewhat like lily bulk and single shoot sell
dom, II ever bears more than bunch of the
fruit. The bulb lives and throws out new shoots
or suckers from time to time and often when the
bananas are ready to cut from one shoot, another
from the same bulk will be growing up and per-
maps in bloom. After the bananas cut the
shoot is cut down and rots upon the ground.
The process of planting new banana grove is
| am sure quite different from what most people
imagine.
Low, rich soil is usually chosen and this in the
tropics is always covered with dense growth of
timber Good banana land be purchased for
very little, but it costs good deal to prepare
and plant an acre than the original cost of the
land
First a gang of men is sent through with ma
cnettas TO cut the rank underground which usually
grows so thick that it seems as if rabbit could
scarcely force his way through After the under
growth has been cut down gang of laborers fol-
low to do the planting. The great banana bulbs
are cut into pieces called bits" each "bit" con-
tanning one eye or sprout the process being sim
llar in large way, to the cutting of seed pota
toes These "bits" are planted in rows much like
a young orchard and then the remainder of the
forest is cut down and allowed to lie as it falls
Where IL rapidly rots and disntegrates, adding
greatly to the richness of the soil.
1t seems great pity at first to see some of the
magnificent trees rotting on the ground when they
apparently have in them great possibilities as
lumber but the fact is most of the tropical trees
are almost useless in that climate as lumber and
great trees five six feet in diameter will almost
completely rot away in two or three years while
the smallest growth will not last one
inc young banana plants sprout and make their
way up through this fallen tangle as best they
can VI course, some of the "bits" never sprout
ana AFTER the young plants show we'll a gang of
iaporers go through and fill in the vacant places
by planting suckers which have started at the base
OF older plants much as they do around the sugar
cane stalks in our southern states
For a time the new jungle growth has to be cut
10 allow the young banana plants good chance to
get started, but after the banana growth is once
wen started 1t is so dense that it completely