Check out that lush spectacle.
Back in January of 2013, I launched an experiment in which I ran the drain from my kitchen sink out into a bed of mulch planted with bananas, malanga and papyrus. It’s along my south wall at the end of my impossibly tropical Miami Garden.
It looked like this two years ago:
That image is from this update I posted almost exactly two years ago.
The bananas are incredible now. Last year they bore us six hands of bananas – and I expect at least that many this year.
The book that inspired me was this one:
Definitely worth buying if you’d like to reuse some of the water in your house rather than letting it go to waste (If you buy a copy, use one of my links and I’ll make a buck or two).
I do have to make sure we don’t dump anything too crazy down the kitchen sink, like salty pickle brine or heavy water from the reactor; but, that small limitation aside, pretty much everything else including bits of food scraps and a limited amount of dish soap seems to have no ill effect on the trees.
In fact, they’re flying. I mean, look again!
We’ve got two hands of bananas forming right now – here’s one of them:
They’re Orinoco bananas, a cold-hardier type with fruit that functions excellently as a cooked plantain and decently as a fresh eating banana when fully ripe.
Last week I set up a little cast iron table and two chairs out there on the patio I built from reclaimed bricks. My wife and I have lately been enjoying our breakfast beneath the towering bananas.
Food and beauty from a sink drain… who would have thought it?
Support this site: shop on Amazon using this link. It doesn’t cost you a penny and it helps pay for my hosting!
8 responses to “My Greywater Oasis: Two Years Later”
Did those bananas die back from the hard freezes you had this winter? If not, do you think they could handle zone 8 in Texas with a similar south facing wall planting?
It killed some of the leaves but they recovered. The trick is NOT to chop them back in the spring – just let them regrow out of the trunks. They count a certain number of leaves, then they fruit. Pruning the trunks back resets them.
I would try Raja Puri bananas in your area. Very fast producer and more cold hardy than most. I'm sure you could get some fruit, particularly by a south wall. Tuck 'em in tight and give them lots of water and nitrogen.
How did you reroute your sink? Did you cut a hole in the wall? I'm in a block house with a shallow crawlspace underneath. The house doesn't belong to us so we can't go cutting holes in the walls but I would *love* to find a way to channel the graywater from our washing machine out to the garden.
Cut right through the wall and ran a PVC pipe out. A raised foundation home would be much easier to do. My place has a slab, unfortunately, so almost all of the greywater is totally inaccessible… which kills me. Stupid construction.
Neat! I've been considering lately if there might be a not-too-expensive way to reclaim some of our grey water, which would also ease up on our septic system a bit.
Yes. It's very, very easy to use, particularly if you have sandy soil and some bananas. ;)
[…] You can read about it and see pictures here. […]
[…] You can read about it and see pictures here. […]