I was going to go out and do a video on how I cut down a banana tree in order to harvest bananas… but then nature did it for me:

Generally, you can simply harvest a stalk of bananas by partially cutting the tree trunk itself and letting the bananas ease their way down to you.

This is safer than standing on a ladder, leaning off the roof, or jumping in the air with a machete.

A stalk of bananas can easily weigh 100lbs.

This stalk of Orinoco bananas is likely 50lbs.

Instead of getting a chance to easy them down, the tree decided to fall all on its own.

With bananas, you don’t have to worry that cutting down the main trunk is keeping you from future fruit.

Every banana tree only fruits once.

It will count leaves until it reaches a certain count, then it sends out its bloom. First the female banana blooms appear (which develop into the fruit), followed by many more male blooms that simply create pollen and are no longer necessary to we, the growers of the modern seedless, cloned banana trees.

Calling them “trees” isn’t really right, either.

Banana tree trunks are actually pseudostems that emerge from a central root mass.

Think of the root as the main part of the banana “tree” – not the individual stems that emerge.

They’re like big lilies, really. Once a stalk produces bananas, that one won’t produce again so you can cut it down, then let the next smallest tree take over.

Or, just let the tree self-deliver as in my case.

Good thing the neighboring pomegranate tree caught the falling trunk or else I might had had some seriously smashed-up banana fruit.