Banana: The helpful fruit

7 Ways to Use an Over-Ripe Banana

1. Help Your Garden Grow: Bananas are naturally high in potassium and encourages plant growth. Use banana peel or puree entire banana and bury with soil.

2. Shoe Polish: Use the peel to make your kicks nice and shiny.

3. Stop the Itch: Rub the inside of a banana peel on a bug bite helps itch relief.

4. Pain Reliever: The oil in a banana peel will help relieve the pain from burns and scratches.

5. Wart Removal: Tape a piece of banana peel on a wart, continue until it’s gone.

6. Make Houseplants Gleam: Just like peels can shine shoes, they can also be used to make the leaves of plants shine.

7. Removing Splinters: Similar to wart removal, tape a piece of the peel over the splinter. The enzymes will help dislodge the splinter and heal the wound.

If you get bitten by a mosquito or stumble into a bit of poison ivy/oak/sumac/whatever, rubbing a banana peel on the affected area can moisturize and neutralize some of the itching. Note that it will just alleviate some of the itching—it won't solve the root problem, like the oils that poison plants leave on your skin. It'll do great as a first step, but if you really want to knock out that rash, you should head to the store and grab some poison ivy soap (and save your banana peels for shoe shining and splinter removal instead).

Remove Splinters Using a Banana Peel

Bananas are a good source of potassium, but turns out the peels can do more than just store the fruit. Apartment Therapy outlines seven ways to put used peels to work, including removal of those inconvenient splinters.

According to the post, taping a piece of the peel over the splinter will help to remove it. How? Apparently "the enzymes will help dislodge the splinter and heal the wound."