There are more varieties of bananas than the kind we see in stores. File photo Photo: RNZ/Susan Murray
When buying bananas at the supermarket - you'll see they come from places like Ecuador or the Philippines.
And you could be forgiven for thinking we can't grow them in New Zealand.
But it turns out more and more Kiwis are getting into the banana game, and there are way more varieties than the Cavendish kind we see in stores.
Ed Hayes and his wife, who had a plantation in Northland, were relatively new to the banana growing scene.
Hayes told First Up he did not know many people in the area.
"Because we're pretty new, we don't know how of a lot of people up here, but whenever Kelly or myself are saying, 'oh yeah, we grow bananas, they usually say ohh are you the guys out on State Highway 1? and we go. 'Yeah, that's us'."
The couple started Tippu Farm just over two years ago and ran it alongside the other business ventures.
Hayes said the farm had 1100 plants at the moment, but they planned to to expand to 1600.
"In this plantation, we've got, Misi Luki, which is a lady finger banana we've got Dwarf Cavendish, We've got Hua Moa and we've got Goldfinger."
Hayes said the bananas - although much smaller than the typical Cavendish bananas you find in supermarkets - were full of flavour and character.
"With a supermarket banana, when they're brown on the outside typically the fruit on the inside is also brown. But really the the skin of these bananas is is just a protectant.
The the fruit underneath it, the actual part that you eat is typically really always good, so it could be blackened on the outside with pets on it and all sorts. And yet underneath the flesh will be perfect."
Banana plants like the ones on Hayes' farm typically took around 18 months before you can start harvesting and selling.
He said they dipped their toes into the market by going through a wholesaler.
"So he'll come along, purchase our bananas and take them off to markets or he'll sell them to the supermarkets like Farrow or something like that, or restaurants.
"And I don't have a lot of time to do that myself and go on the weekends and everything."
Hugh Rose had been running his plantation longer than Hayes.
"I couldn't believe when I read somewhere that we were the largest consumers of bananas and I had actually successfully grown bananas amongst other things."
"I could not believe that we're importing 80 million kilos of bananas when they could be perfectly easily grown here and better tasting ones than what we get usually from the shops."
Rose was the founder and chairperson for the tropical Fruit Growers Association of New Zealand.
"All bananas are not created equal."
He said it was difficult to say how many varieties of bananas actually existed.
"We could classify into a broad breakdown of plantain, which is a cooking banana, ladyfinger, the Cavendish, which is a thick skinned ones, but all bananas that we eat are hybridised and have been created by men. So yeah, there's millions of them."
He said he had 40-50 different varieties at his plantation.
Northland was known for its farming and horticulture, with popular crops like avocados, kumara, kiwi fruit and citrus, but it hard to put into words the diversity of fruit on display at Hughes Farm.
Rose had a number of plants on his land including mango trees, coffee beans, Himalayan strawberries and pineapples.
He told First Up, his mantra was "poke and hope".
