Nursery At Our Little Farm

Had been working on our nursery since last year, after we planned on producing value added products for our farm. We started off initially producing banana suckling for our plantation. Our nursery had grown since then.

On the bananas, we now have variety which we like such as berangan, emas, kerling and saba. We also have other varieties which we shall discontinue as we feel that it's not suitable.

Our Chinese yam, sucklings are produce in-house. We are now at the 4th generation.

Papaya seedling are already in progress, we are now producing the Mas Solo varieties. Seeds were taken from the trees we planted back in April last year. First batch of about 150 plants had already been transferred into poly bags. Papaya seeds maybe the easiest to germinate.

The first batch of Agarwood, didn't went as smooth as anticipated. Due to the recent heavy rain, it's infected with Phytophthora fungal. Had already had some mortality. Punched holes on the poly bag to increase drainage. Organized and counted to be about 590 plants. Also I may had send it for hardening too early. Had put up a shade netting of D 70.

Soursop plant-lets are at the hardening stage, estimated to be about 150. May not be grafting soursop as it bear fruits quite early, about 3 years. This takes the longest time to germinate.

Jackfruits, we have plenty. I guess I was not successful on the grafting on the previous batch is that the rootstock could be too small. It should be at 'pencil' size. Had added another qualifier, that it should have mature leaves (3 lobed). Ao far had only managed 2 plant-lets, that was transferred to field planting. Another 5 in the waiting. Looks like I need to put in more effort here.

We now have 3 types of lime. The numbers of plant-lets is only at 14.

Rubber seedlings, estimate to be in the region of 350. I tried germinating 200 seeds. Had also pulled about 250 seedlings that germinated from the rubber plantation next door. Looks like we may not need to germinate, as it's lesser work, just to collect from the rubber plantation. Grafting, had not had any success yet.

Avocado, we are already on the 3rd batch. Had transferred about 40 successfully grafted plants to the field.

Other seedling that we are preparing are breadfruit, chempedak and manggo. There are still plenty more to learn. The numbers of successfully grafted plants are still low. Am working hard on it.  These shall keep me busy for a while. Planning to finish off my chaos and be home for the Chinese New Year celebration. Stay tune for our next update.

Dolphines At Koh Samui.

Our cat wanted to tag along.

Took a vacation to Koh Samui. Managed to booked a flight by Air Asia to Surathani, which is on the mainland, and it's a get a way to Koh Samui. Booked for a five days four night trip. As the date draw near, there was a rescheduling of flight. The trip to Surathani was still within our schedule, but the return trip was shifted to 11.30 a.m. As this is the first time to Koh Samui we decided to cut short our stay at Koh Samui, spend a night at Surathani to prepare for our flight home.
Traveling from from Surathani to Koh Samui takes about 5 ~ 6 hours. We were transferred from bus to ferry, bus then to van. Were all worn out by the time reached our hotel.

The jetti at Koh Samui.

We were booked into Mercure Samui Chaweng Tana which is located at Chaweng Beach. It's right along the shopping area, but a bit closer to the end. It does not have a beach front, but do have a nice pool. It also housed 3 restaurant. Lepitet Italian Restaurant, Fuji Japanese Restaurant & Baantana Thai Restaurant. Had a quick wash up and went to search for food as we were very hungry. It's most probably due to the long journey. We even had a light snac on board the ferry when boarding at Don Sak pier.

Mercure by night.

Had a short walk about and decided to try out the Fuji Japanese Restaurant as my wife love Japanese food.
They serve fresh and fabulous Japanese food, with lots of varieties. We even had the Sake.  We got a gift from Fuji, it's a prosperity cat pen & note holder.

Chaweng Beach.

We spend most of our time on shopping, dinning, massage, strolling by the beach and a day trip to Anthong National Marine Park. The shopping street at Chaweng beach is extremely long. We couldn't manage to finished walking it.

The sandy beach of Chaweng is mostly occupied by resorts & hotels. They have their own beach front which is fun if you are into this. Lots of tourist lazing around, having massage and playing either at the pool or beach.

Mue Koh Island

Our day trip to Anthong National Marine park started at 7.30 a.m. We were sent to the jetti by a van and were then transferred to our tour boat. Boat ride is about 1 1/2 hours and light snacks & drinks were served. We didn't eat much as we had taken our breakfast at our hotel and wouldn't want to be at a full stomach ride on a boat.

View from the 3rd view point.

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First stop is Mue Koh Island. We went up the trek, which turns out to be a climb, to the view point up in the limestone hill. There were a total of 5 view points, the highest being 500 M high. The highest that our guide let us to is the 3rd view point at 300 M high as time wouldn't permit us to continue. I would rate the climb as tough, as we need the help of a rope to pull ourselves up and at times need to be on all fours

We went back down to the beach for a stroll and rest. Lunch was served at the tour boat. I had Thai curry chicken, spring rolls and salad.

The Emerald Lagoon.

Second stop were to the Emerald lagoon located at Mae Koh island. It is surrounded by limestone hills . To access it, we need to climb over the limestone hill, which again is steep. This time, stairs were available, but still a tough climb. We made it to the top, but did not proceed down to the lagoon as we don't want to climb up again on the way out.

Last itenary was kayaking. I initially wanted to skip this, but my wife insisted. Thank our lucky star that we too it. Circumstances had it that we were put into the second group. First was kayaking through a water cave, with the tide raising, there were barely enough room to go through, also it was very dark at the narrowest point. We had to lay back flat on the kayak to pass. As we were kayaking to the island, we met up with 3 dolphins swimming pass. The 1st one was a Pink Dolphin, followed by 2 greys. It's the 1st time I saw wild live dolphin. I was overwhelmed with joy & excitement. Had no time to take out my camera as it was packed in a waterproof bag. I felt so
lucky starting off 2013 with this sighting as we had been to numerous dolphin sighting trips on many of our vacation with no luck.

Lovely gift from Fuji.

We spent our last day on the shopping street. We walked until we were very tired and went for a massage. It was so relaxing. It made me hungry after that, hence a heavy late lunch by the Cafe Uno. At night we patronized Fuji Japanese Restaurant again. Had a lovely Japanese dinner, but as we were to finish, there came many customers and mos of them had to wait for tables. We quickly settled our bill and be on our way. We now have 3 sets of these cute lovely cats.

Guess I'll head back to the farm and start to work hard for 2013.