Now that I’ve got your attention.....
A couple of years ago we put in a banana circle, (the process of putting in the banana circle is covered in another article) and in Sydney’s climate they will take a few years to fruit, but they will fruit! However the frost at the start of last winter (2010) was the worst we have seen for a while, getting down to minus 3°C and it ripped the living daylights out of the bananas. In the end two of the smaller plants did not recover and although one sent out a sucker to replace it, the other didn’t thus requiring the process I am about to describe.
Banana trees reproduce by producing two suckers of the original tree (bush, herb, whatever you want to call it!). If you can wait until the suckers are a bit over a metre high so much the better but I wanted to replace the dead banana tree soon as. Fortunately one of the larger trees had put forth a sucker that was about half a metre high, so it won the toss. The best one to get, if you have a choice, is to go for one that has small spindly leaves rather than pretty big round ones, the theory being that the sucker with the spindly leaves has been well taken care of by the mother plant and so has not needed to put out large leaves for photosynthesis. Any way that is the theory!
The trick is to get a sharp implement such as a sharpened spade or as in my case a machete, between the sucker and the mother plant and force it down so that is cuts the base (corm) of the sucker away from the mother plant, but still maintain as many roots as possible. Then it is just a case of digging the soil away from the sucker and removing it and replanting it where you want it to go. You can cut off the foliage to reduce transpiration of water from the banana sucker while it gets established in its new position, but I have done this a couple of times and not bothered to and things seemed to have worked out OK.
So you see it is possible to obtain free banana plants from ones already growing in your garden or perhaps donated to your fruit growing efforts by mates. Just remember –
• Only take suckers from healthy vigorous mother plants
• The bigger the sucker, the shorter the time to flowering and fruit production
• You can cut off the foliage to help the sucker establish.
Good luck and don’t go...umm.....bananas! 
