Plant Diseases Coccidae, black soft scale.

Finally, I manage to identify the insects infesting our trees. It is the Scale insects, Coccidae family.

The insects in this family are covered with wax secretion. The covering may be scale-like or mussel-shaped. From their appearance they do not look like insect. When they grow, most of their external organs, such as their legs, wings and antenna, are reduced and become functionless.

The young scale insects have three pair of legs, known as 'crawlers'. It is their responsibility for spreading and looking for suitable place to start new colony. They are very small, although they have no wings, they can spread by wind borne. When the females settle, they seldom move. Male adult scale insects are winged.

They affect different type of board leaf plants. The insects live under the protected shell cover, which is their waxy secretion. Notice the sooty mould that they induced. The insects suck the plant juice. Within the juice, there are water and sugar more than the insects need. They are excreted as honeydew. This induces the mould and attracts ants. The adults are well under protection. Some ladybirds are the predators of their young.


This infection, when prolonged shall reach a stage the it kills the plant. We had tried removing the insects manually to about 90% and find the the plant's growth rate is back to normal. We are testing for an easier / faster way to remove these.

Back to Farming

First day, back to farming, after a long break. It's so tiring, even simple chore of lifting the Cangkul seems like lifting a ton. It was raining for the whole morning, good for us as we are doing new planting. This shall keep the new plant from being dehydrated. We are now working on Parcel 5. Parcel 5 is a 4 acres plot of relatively flat land with a small creek running through the middle, cutting off the land into two almost equal half. This piece of land was planted on before hence no need for heavy clearing. Still we are having trouble clearing it of some heavy grass, tapioca, wild yams, wild bananas & etc.

A panoramic sweep of Parcel 5. We can only see half of the parcel from this point, as the other is seperated by the creek. Anyway, we shall concentrate here first. We are planning to plant Banana, Yam, Corn and some vegetables here. We had started a Ginger patch beneath a tree.

Only a couple start growing. The first batch of corns are growing nicely. This is the Kampung variety, grow for chicken feed. We are testing out some Thailand Hybrid Sweet Corn too.

We had also planted some tissue culture Cavendish banana.

Saw some massive sized earthworms while clearing the land of tapioca. It's about 12 mm in diameter, maybe I'll catch a few of these and breed them in a worm bin. Have to start planning on how to built a worm bin.
Need to have an early night as I'm exhausted.

Ayam Seramas, Miniature Chicken

Took these picture of the Seramas Chicken. It is kept as a pet. I did not know that it cost a lot for these chicken. Also there is a lot of followings even in Europe and US. I did a search and found that they are selling these for up to 2500 pounds in UK. In Malaysia I think the followers are quite huge as i see lots of competitions being held at many towns, throughout Malaysia. Maybe I'll visit one of these competition venue to find out more.