John Gifford, 1911. Gifford was a tropical forester of some note then. He was being a bit facetious of course regarding what bananas will put up with, but was probably only half kidding about the useful addition of minor nutrients and organic matter to the soil.

"With me the banana is a favorite crop. I dig a deep hole in moist soil or muck. Into this hole I empty my waste basket containing old letters, newspapers, returned manuscripts, etc.; also the kitchen barrel containing tin cans and other stuff that the chickens will not eat; then I throw in sweepings, rakings, old fertilizer bags, old iron, useless wood, bottles, and trash of any and every kind. On top of this I put a good forkful of stable manure and then some sand or muck. Then the banana root, often no bigger than your two fists, dry and lifeless-looking, after having been kicked about in the sun for a few days, waiting for planting time, is stuck into the ground and covered with a few inches of dirt.

"In three months, if the weather is good, you may sit in the grateful shade of this big green-leaved plant. I almost called it a tree, because its stalk is as big as a man's leg and its foliage may be several feet above your head, but according to the definitions a tree must have a central woody axis, and to the banana there is no woody texture; it is all as soft as a cabbage and is usually completely consumed in a short time when left to chickens.

"Within a year a bunch of fruit is produced which a man can hardly carry--a bunch so big that it often bends the plant to the ground unless propped by forked sticks. As soon as the bunch and stalk are cut, up shoots another and another. A dozen or more suckers are at the same time produced so that more and more may be planted. What an active chemical laboratory this plant is to form so much leaf and stalk and fruit from soil and atmosphere in less than a year!"