184 FLORIDA FRUITS GUAVAS AND BANANAS. 



and, moreover, a consideration not to be despised, their 

 broad leaves will furnish just the amount of shade required 

 by garden vegetables during midsummer, and the fertiliz- 

 ers and cultivation applied to the latter will also benefit 

 the bananas. 



In preparing for the plants holes three feet wide and 

 two feet deep should be dug, and a rich compost of rotted 

 leaves, muck, and manure, or commercial fertilizers, placed 

 in the bottom of the hole, and the rest mixed with the soil 

 that is packed around the roots. 



A mistake our Florida planters usually make is, in not 

 setting the banana deep enough in the ground. The hole, 

 as we have said, should be two feet deep, and if the plant 

 to be set should not be large enough to permit this depth 

 to be filled in around it at once, then the earth should be 

 packed in as far as possible, and the rest filled in gradually 

 as the banana grows upward. In other words, the banana 

 plant, to do its best, must be set at least two feet below 

 the surface of the ground. 



When fifteen months old the banana, if it has no draw- 

 backs, will put forth, from the center of the stem at the 

 top, a curious shaped bloom, that just appears, pointing 

 upward from amid the broad leaves, and then droops out- 

 ward and downward at the end of a stout stalk. The bloom 

 looks much like a fat ear of corn with red husks. These 

 latter lift slowly up, one after the other, as though hinged 

 at the top, revealing the strange, odd-looking "fingers" of 

 bananas, ranged symmetrically beneath them. Each leaf 

 of the husk drops off after it has done its duty in protect- 

 ing the young fruit from the sun for a day or two, and 

 the next in order of descent raises the lid from its row of 

 fruit. 



The same red husks, brighter inside than out, are just 

 the shape of the popular, long, shell-shaped pickle dishes, 



