Banana- Hua Moa

Inventory of bananas will be intermittent. You will be notified when plants are available via email and text. You will have 24 hours to make your purchase before we notify the next customer in line.

Hua Moa is a variety that we were having diminishing excitement about as the plant growth was somewhat mediocre and the fruit bunches were small.  Then we cooked some of this Hawaiian cooking banana and were blown away by the quality.  The green fruit of this variety can be boiled and made into exquisite “mashed potatoes”.  The quality of the green fruit is worlds away from any others we have tried yet.  This is one of the most delicious staple foods we have ever harvested from our gardens.  This variety is a little fickle and unproductive compared to others, but so delicious that we will continue to dedicate garden space to it.  For growers up to a bit of a challenge and want to feast like Hawaiian royalty, this is the variety.  Mashed potatoes from a tree!

Hua Moa stems are sort of thin and overall plant health is not super impressive.  Growers report that frequent applications of organic matter are needed to keep up the production on this cultivar.  A site protected from wind, dappled shade and other protective measures should increase the productivity of Hua Moa.  The fruit are very strange, being round and growing to quite a large size which helps make up for a low number of total fruit on each bunch.  The cooked green fruit is our favorite thing to eat.  The cooked ripe fruit is great but not very distinctive from other plantains/cooking bananas to our taste.

We are actively seeking out a more productive variety with the same quality but for the time being this is the best we’ve got for a “mashed potato” banana.

Read about how we ship bananas here.