Jeff Hodgins

This is our shower. https://youtube.com/shorts/bCpFTkXGTuw?si=01Geu5ZsxLA42fT9

https://youtube.com/shorts/AIqxpWRY58A?si=gAfUp5HWXPUt5lUY progress

https://youtube.com/shorts/f0tWyNpojbw?si=qyfWhn8i4yv9k996 this is a more recent look.

Normally you would take dead or yellow leaves from a banana tree but you wait until the leaf is substantially yellow or dieing before cutting it this is important because you don't want to go cutting green leaves from the plant Willy nilly as they say. It is even more important not to take leaves when the plant is producing the fruit at this stage the plant will naturally start to look more yellow. That being said if you have lemon grass under your banana you want to cut as much banana away as possible to allow enough light for the lemon grass to survive. So in areas like that you can go a bit harder on the leaves of the younger banana plants and you can also reduce the plant to one mother one sucker. Bewear or tall banana varieties because when they are ripe it's a huge stem that can break branches and it requires a long tool and harvest tequnique. They also take more time to produce a rack of bananas. With proper technique it is possible to harvest purple bananas without injury or damage to other crops.

Key species for the future and some techniques. We don't want our big trees to stop is from having all the other stuff that we want. Our strategy has been planting trees far enough apart. Take a tree like cinnamon, it can be grown at high density because no fruit needs to form just bark. Pineapple and sugarcane seem to share a space well because they occupy different strata. And pineapple with banana is a win because when your pineapple plants look big enough to flower you can do a reset and cut all the bananas easily and that should give you a pineapple cycle. Potion pea planted densely with anything will require pruning. Sugarcane will start to have infection of young shoots if lightning and airflow are not adequate. The infections are mostly red rot and cane smut. I think that sugarcane is a great intercrop plant if older leaves are frequently removed. Thyme tomatoes and other crops have done well near sugarcane if light is considered when pruning and weeding is essential. The jury is still out on whether Taro and sugarcane make good companions. Taro is not much shorter than sugarcane so the have more direct competition for light and space. The area where I had Taro and sugarcane was not weeded well enough to use as an example but the Taro there were still small and so I didn't harvest any from the area yet.

Some pictures

I think the key is taking into consideration the light requirements of the different plants when you're doing your planning. So in my case I'm in a tropical climate so I'll just give you an example of some of the consortium or polycultures that I am working with. So you could have a row of taller emergent tree species and then next to that row or even in the same row you can have your bananas because they have a lower light requirement. Then close to your bananas you could have pigeon peas and then farther from the trees you could have sugar cane and underneath the sugar cane you could have pineapples and underneath all of that you could have sweet potatoes.  A professional chili pepper grower once told me that habanero pepper plants that are planted in the shade take longer to produce but in the end they live for longer they produce a larger plant and the fruits are larger. So it might be a good idea to experiment with different types of chili peppers in the shade.

In syntropic agriculture they say that one man can usually take care of about one hectare which is 2.4 acres using syntropic methods which can be a little bit more labor intensive. And that's if you're working on it full time. But that's also an average if you're a hard worker I think you could handle a lot more than that I have been maintaining approximately one hectare but I don't work everyday. I probably work one day of 10. I'm working in a tropical environment which I think in the long run is less work because you have increased stratification more shade tolerant plants and it can really become a stable system. Of course initially in a warm environment with lots of moisture it will be difficult to maintain things. My advice would be to start on a small area and once those plants are well established and they can handle a little bit of neglect then move on to establishing more areas. If you're in a temperate area I would definitely recommend raspberries is one of your understory crops and some species of Dioscorea depending on your latitude. Another really great plant for maintaining the understory of an orchard is the Canna edulus these plants can take crazy amounts of shade and they can produce a carbohydrate rich tuber. Another plant that can take a lot of shade is capsicum pubescence but it is a long season crop and does not take Frost. Basically the more shade tolerant crops you have the easier it will be to maintain if you're trying to maintain the orchard while letting in crazy amounts of light then weeds will be harder to maintain. The best thing to do is to fill up those areas, block that light and also create competition for nutrients.