Do bananas speed up the composting process?
Kev Baines, by email
Stefan says: Occasionally, I’m asked a question I’ve never been asked before. And this is one of them! It all seems perfectly logical. So let us look at the science behind it. Placing a banana with other fruit will certainly help them to ripen; while placing a banana with fruit that are already ripe, will cause them to become useless.
The explanation lies with a chemical called ethylene, which is produced by all fruit as they begin to ripen. Some, however, produce it very slowly and that’s why placing a banana, which produces it in abundance, aids the process.
Composting, however, is a quite different operation that doesn’t involve ethylene. It’s a process of decomposition brought about by bacteria and fungi and the only way you can speed it up is to supply some additional nitrogen (in the form of a high nitrogen fertiliser) to get them started.