My Homestead Dream : I just want to grow bananas

It all started with a banana.

Many moons ago when I was a student in the 1980's I got a summer job at Bayfordbury Research Station in Hertfordshire.

My job was counting bean weevils and carabid beetles for a biological control project.

It was a great summer. The sun shone, the work was interesting, my colleagues were easy going and I could even catch a siesta in the bean fields while waiting for the bug traps to fill.

But there was something special about Bayfordbury. Until the late 1960's it had been the home of the John Innes Horticultural Institution. And their tropical research greenhouses were still running.

In one of those greenhouses they grew bananas.

Then on one sunny summer afternoon, after I had been there a few weeks, I was allowed to pick a banana to eat. It was the best banana I had ever tasted.

I was hooked. One day I knew I must grow my own bananas.

If you live in a warm country you might think that is no big deal, but in wild wet and windy west Wales bananas are way, way out of reach.

I have tried growing banana plants in pots in the conservatory but it was all leaves and no action.

To grow bananas here I know I am going to need a tropical greenhouse.

But I don't want just any old greenhouse I want a Victorian style wooden frame greenhouse, with a wood boiler to heat it.

To put this greenhouse in the setting it deserves I want to build a walled garden around it.

I love visiting old country houses that have walled gardens. We have friends a few miles from here who have one - jealous I am... but they don't grow bananas.

My walled garden will not just be any ordinary brick built affair.

I want mine to be built of Welsh granite. With walls at least 6 feet tall, capped off with Welsh slate and beautiful quartz that will glisten in the sun.

All the stone will come from our land and a nearby quarry.

But I do not want these walls to steal too much of the sunlight from the crops inside. So on the front south side I want to include stained glass windows to allow the sun's rays to dance and dazzle on the vegetables on the inside.

I am still wondering what those windows might depict. One window for each member of the family to start, and then whatever the muses tell me.

As well as rocks aplenty, we are blessed with an ample supply of wood. It would be so good if we could use our own timber. I am sure though that green timber building would not work for a greenhouse so the trees will need to be cut and cured well in advance.

All this for a bunch of bananas?

Is this a dream or could it be a reality?

This is my ten year project. It will be based on the existing pig garden where the polytunnel is. The perimeter is about 120m.

I believe the going rate locally for a stonemason to build a wall like this is around £150 per metre. As most of the materials for the wall will be from our land the total cost for the wall will be around £18,000. But if I can learn the skill of dry stone walling I can build a few metres a year and reduce the cost.

My wife wants to learn stain glass window making.

The cost for the greenhouse will be around £5000 and the boiler will be a similar amount. There might be grants available for the wood boiler.

Using our own materials and some of our own labour we should be able to keep the total cost for the project to around £10,000 (US $ 13,500), or £1,000 (US $1,350) a year for ten years

This is of course a ridiculous amount of money to pay for a bunch of bananas.

But this is my dream, my folly, my legacy for those that come after me.

This concept is still all in my head. The next stage will be to visualize it. To take the project forward I would love to tap into the creative talent of steemit to run a contest to produce an 'artists impression' or concept design of how this might look. That will be the next step on my journey to realise my dream.

This post is my entry in the Homesteading Challenge #4 by @kiaraantonoviche

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You might also be interested in some of my other posts :

[banana and garden/polytunnel images provided by @pennsif // greenhouse image by Vernon39 (own work) [public domain], via Wikimedia Commons // walled garden image by Chris Wood via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license // stained glass image from Pixabay under CC0 Creative Commons license]