Cook with the Whole Banana Plant
There’s more to bananas than cream pie. Chef Rodrigo “Drigo” Richardson, owner of The Culinary Alchemist, says the plant is completely sustainable. “We use the leaves to make special dishes like douco...
Going Bananas
Consider the banana. It’s the first fresh fruit many babies eat. It’s widely available year-round, is reasonably priced and makes a nutritious snack. It even comes in its own handy yellow wrapper. Nearly everyone likes bananas.
Yet the average supermarket banana – likely picked green and shipped from thousands of miles away – is hardly the best example of the banana. In subtropical South Florida, many of the best fruits have come from a tidy family grove in the Redland. After three decades, the founders are ready to pass on the torch.
For more than 30 years, Don and Katie Chafin have been keeping everyone in bananas – from South Florida to Alaska and beyond. If you bought a banana plant at an event, or picked up bananas at the farmers market, there’s a good chance they originated from the Chafins. They are the go-to folks for all things bananas, supplying plants and fertilizer and advice to farmers, backyard gardeners and tropical fruit lovers alike, from their neatly landscaped banana grove on their five-acre home in the Redland.
The journey to becoming banana buffs and, finally, Going Bananas, was not something the Chafins had planned when they found their property in the 1990s. “I didn’t even like bananas that much,” says Katie. She had been working as director of nursing at Palmetto General Hospital; Don had been working with Eastern Airlines until the company folded. It was time to make their move. “We wanted to get out of the rat race and live in the country,” she says. They bought a house a few minutes from Redland Fruit and Spice Park, and started going to meetings of the Tropical Fruit and Vegetable Society. They found mentors in tropical fruit expert Jonathan Crane of the Tropical Research and Education Center (TREC) and retired fighter pilot William Lessard, who grew specimens like Hua Moa and Orinoco and wrote The Complete Book of Bananas.
“And then I started eating bananas that tasted like something,” says Katie. The Chafins started small, growing some bananas. Then came Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Their house was OK, but everything else was affected after the monster storm raged through Homestead, she recalls: “It was all brown where it had been so lush.” They replanted some of their bananas and within three days noticed them sprouting green.
They took over Lessard’s bananas and began immersing themselves in the world of fruits. “Bill went to Honduras to visit the Experimental Station in Banana Research,” Katie says. He learned how they grow bananas in South America, and about diseases, molds, mildews and fungus. He started giving talks on bananas at garden clubs and taking part in shows throughout the state – as many as 22. They took orders for bananas from their Going Bananas website and shipped out plants across the country and entertained visitors from overseas. One of their fans was a 13-year-old from Colorado who ordered bananas.
“His mother in Denver looked us up,” she says. “So we sent him a plant.”
Photo 1: Don with teenaged Gabe Sachter-Smith
Photo 2: Gabe displays wild orange bananas from Malaita, Solomon Islands
That teenager, Gabe Sachter-Smith, is now 29 and remembers how it all started for him. “I had learned a random fact about bananas in the eighth grade: They don’t grow on trees. They’re tropical herbs,” he says. “Man, I was still thinking about it after two days. I’m not a big fan of fruits – what I wanted to learn more about was the plant.”
The first plant he ordered was a Rose banana, “a weird plant that seemed cool,” he says. “I killed it.” Then the Chafins sent him a super dwarf Cavendish that lived. Sachter-Smith started exchanging plants online with other aficionados and volunteering at the Denver Botanic Gardens. He took a trip to South Florida to meet the Chafins and tour their farm, and returned to grow even more bananas in his family’s sunroom, kept warm with space heaters and grow lights. “The electric bills were higher, but my parents were OK with that.” At its peak, he had 1,000 plants and 70 varieties, including small wild species and ornamentals.
After graduation, Sachter-Smith went to the University of Hawai’i because of its tropical agriculture program where he could continue his study of bananas. In 2016, he made his first official paid collecting expedition to Papua New Guinea. Bananas have taken him to China, Uganda, Belgium, Finland, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Rwanda, Indonesia, among other locations. He’s now running a banana nursery in Hawai’i and helps a friend run his farm.
“Don and Katie have been an amazing resource for me and the banana hobby community,” he says. “I can trace the lineage of so many plants to them.”
“Now Gabe’s a world expert on bananas,” says Katie. “We’re so proud of him.”
Photo 1: Don checks on plants in the five-acre grove.
Photo 2: Red bananas
Photo 3: Banana blossom
Life on the Farm
The tranquil Redland space, with its carefully edged landscaping and tidy rows of bananas, is Katie’s happy place. “On some of my most stressful days, I’d walk alone in the banana grove. I needed my bananas.” She has even named the golden orb spiders in the trees "Oscar" and "Homer."
“For my birthday, I asked for a truckload of manure,” she says. For Don, it’s the lifestyle that appeals to him: “The fresh air, being able to eat off the land.” They feast on more than bananas – the tropical oasis is lush with lychee, pomelo, sapodilla, noni, annonas, starfruit, kaffir lime, canistel mamey sapote, avocado, mango, jaboticaba, caimito, guava and longan, along with Everglades tomato, pigeon peas and sour orange. The beehives are abuzz.
Idyllic as it is, the grove and its upkeep is taking its toll on the Chafins. A year ago, Irma left it “looking like a game of pick-up sticks,” with toppled trees everywhere. It took nearly a year to replace two shade houses. Don is in his 70s. He’s been paring down his appearances at annual plant and garden shows from 20+ to seven a year.
After three decades, the Chafins are ready to find someone else to take over their tropical paradise.
“We’ve been at it for 32 years,” Katie says. “We’ve been married to this. Now we’re ready to explore other things.” They’ve decided to look for someone else to run things, ideally someone younger. They’re hoping to pass the torch to a new generation of plant explorers.
“They know sustainability and they know their fruit,” says Katie. “These people have great ideas. We need that young exuberance.”
GOING BANANAS
going-bananas.com
24401 SW 197 Ave, Homestead
Hours: Mon., Tues., Fri. and Sat. 9am-4pm
Cook with the Whole Banana Plant
There’s more to bananas than cream pie. Chef Rodrigo “Drigo” Richardson, owner of The Culinary Alchemist, says the...
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