Golf Course Turf Grass, Shifting Goal Post

Golf Course Turf Grass Part 2

Our initial trail.

The amended soil.

The amended soil.

Just came back from my vacation in Vietnam and now back to work. We are shifting our goal post. Our initial Goal is to find out if AgroSol works for Turf and after a couple of weeks, we are finalizing an order of AgroSol for a bigger trial. We are just waiting for the official documentations.

In the mean time, am shifting from "if it works" to optimization. From the initial concentration, 1:200, 1:400 & 1:600, I find that 1:600 works better. This is definitely a run off from our normal perception that "more is always better"

My last spraying about 14 days ago, was done while drizzling. So I guess this is a good time to change the concentration.



Let this run for 28 days and check back on the results. Stay tuned.

#Agrosol #Organic #Natural #BeeFriendly #PurePlantEnergy
Tested in Malaysia for #AvocadoFriendly #GrapeFriendly #DurianFriendly#MangoFriendly #RockmelonFriendly #PapayaFriendly #TurfFriendly #FigFriendly#BlueButterFlyPeaFriendly #BananaFriendly #ChilliFriendly

Hi, long time no see.

It’s been a while since I had updated my blog. Had to take leave from our farm since July 2015. So where had I been? Due to the extremely low price of rubber, I had to go look for a job to tie me over as my funds had ran out. I went back to Kuala Lumpur and had a busy time looking for a job. Job opportunity for me is rather limited, due to my profile & age. Went for a couple of interviews and was quick to find out that young interviewers normally had some prejudices against me. I was even given a lecture on doing poultry & aquaculture by an interviewer. 

 2016. Managed to secure a job in the field of business software, thank you. Start off in January. It is a big challenge for me. Starting all over again, change my mind set, getting use to new routes to the office, office culture and be on time. I was even told to change my dressing style, to look more like an IT person. Learn and read up a lot of in this field. Just like someone fresh from college.  Had the opportunity to learn about logistics, warehouse management, supply chain & etc.
MAHA 2016. Drop in for a visit on the 10^th December 2016. Found a couple of interesting things that I would like to share from MARDI. These are not new innovation, but interesting, can be DIY and scale up.

A local development by TaniMac, Seeder X. My opinion is that the concept is good for high volume of seeding. It's basically a vacuum powered suction, holding the seeds and then releasing the seeds with vacuum off, by gravity the seeds falling into the tray. Here is a video on Tray Seeder X.

I guess we can DIY for a more customized solution. The concept is pretty simple. Customized to the exact tray size for higher productivity.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w14foYnDsAw

 Planting mat. I can think of many uses for this. We can use this to seed grass and then offer as an instant grass carpet. Can also be used in slope control, Mulch, weed control & etc.

We can add value by impregnating the mat with various additives for more uses.

Hydro Pot, a system to save watering time, storing water in the pot and can refill manually or automatically. It is a much simpler method, mostly using gravity & evaporation.

Vertical Hydroponic, simple & efficient. I was searching for Hydroponic and Marijuana came up. We can scale up this model and I think by introducing air into the system, we can bring up the efficiency. An Aeroponic or Fogponic.

The material for this project are mostly off the shelve, thus lowering the set up cost.

I had always been looking for an inter crop under rubber plantation. Some of the factors should be reasonable price, readily available market, least disease prone, no obstruction to the rubber trees & etc. I still had not find any crops that I can plant under our rubber trees.

Again, concept is good, recycling. I guess logistic shall pose an issue and logistic & deployment cost may not be justifiable.

The pressure syringe caught me eyes. Not only can it do inoculation for  Gaharu, we can use it to treat trees.

Yes, I had read about air pruning of roots and it's benefits.

Micro propagation of pineapple. I wonder if the concept is similar to banana.

This is most welcome,as I remembered while I was planting papaya, the shelve life is only about a week. If we can prolong it, we can sell further, expanding the market.

2017. Am planning to get back into the agriculture industry. Hopefully I can secure a job related to farming/ plantation. Maybe have some time of going back to our farm for a visit and make new strategy for the fruit trees. Rubber prices had consolidated slightly now and hopefully can strengthen further in 2017. Hope to spend some time writing for my blog and FB. In FB we have Avocados Lovers Malaysia and Avocado & Fig Wholesale.

Shall be starting off 2017 with shifting house, go on a vacation and find a job in Agriculture.

Parcel 1, October 2013

Parcel 1, our model farm.
Our vision for Parcel 1 is getting clearer by the months. Our rubber trees are measuring up to 420 mm in diameter. Very close to our targeted measurement. Of course not all trees grow at the same rate. There are some that are still very skinny and some are planted on a latter date. Overall the rubber trees are doing great.

One of the bigger tree, 420 mm.

Our vision for Parcel 1 is an integrated farm, having rubber trees as the main crop. Then we shall have supplementary crop of fruit trees. These are further supplemented with livestock, chicken and bees (much later).

Here we had planted more than 30 avocado trees, 80 soursop trees and more than 70 agarwood till date. On a smaller scale, we have some papaya, about 10 durian trees, 2 jackfruit, 4 mango and a breadfruit. We still have some bananas which we are phasing out and some pineapples. My plan for the papaya did not worked out as the time difference between planting was not right. Also at a long period, we didn't have any helpers at site. Anyway, as a fall back, we can always feed it to our chickens.

Chicken we have about 70 around, big & small.
Apiculture had not been started yet. It shall most probably be the last phase of development. I guess we can put in easily a couple of tens of beehives. There are so many plants here, rubber, palm oil, fruits, wild plants, unlimited resources of nectar.

Agarwood, planted on the inter rows.

Agarwood, planted on the inter rows.

Blame it on our government, even the chicken are racist. The blacks & the whites do not stay together.

Mango flowers.

Rooster.

Mango, already fruiting. Trying to identify what variety this is. Maybe can use this as a mother tree.

Our isolation new coop.

Newly planted soursop.

Another bigger tree.

Some of the trees during March.

Our hut with agarwood by the side.

Our avocado tree.

Our 1st avocado tree in between the rubber trees.

Another 75 Agarwood for planting in Parcel 1. Hopefully our retirement shall be well taken care of with the resins produced.

Summarise
Main crop : Rubber trees
supplemented by fruit trees, Avocado, Soursop & Jackfruit
Livestock : Free Range Village Chicken & Bees (yet to be started)
Retirement Fund : Agarwood / Gaharu

Rescuing Our Soursop, Annona Muricata.

Our 1st batch of Soursop was planted back in April.

Propagating & Planting Soursop, Annona Muricata

Due to the raining, access road to that particular section was cut off. We had to wait for the bulldozer to come by and clear off the small land slide.

 Even with the bulldozer clearing that section, the surface is still soft & muddy. I went down to inspect the Soursop and found that they had been over ran with weeds as it's already about 5 months since we planted.

We managed to organize a recuse mission. As it had just rained the previous night, we have to park our truck about 0.8 km away and trek down to that section. Trekking down is easy, but bringing all our stuff is a bit of a handful.We then have to cross a small river before we reach that section.

We use parang (machetes) to slash off the weed and to locate the planted soursop. It wasn't too difficult as we had marked the plants with a small pole, covered with the discarded polybags. Those with fallen markers are the difficult to ones to locate. Thank goodness that I guess we only lost maybe less than 5 plants. There are also a couple of agarwood trees that we planted on the slope side. On the river side there are a couple of Berangan banana trees.

It took us about half a day to complete our task.

Trekking back is challenging as it's up hill.

We came back a couple of days later to do weed management with herbicide.

Going off for my break and shall check back next month. Stay tune for update.

Top Clef Grafting Jackfruit 2

  Continue from

Top Clef Grafting Jackfruit

Came back to our little farm on the 30th August. Was very anxious to check out my Jackfruit grafting. This is the third time doing Jackfruit grafting. Once I collect and send off our produce to the market I proceed with the inspection.

Was disappointed as I see most of the graft dried off. The next few days was spent on analyzing why the graft did not 'take'. Took off a couple of the failed grafting. Started to redo on a go slow mode while trying to analyses what went wrong.

Most of the plastic bags covering the scion were blew off due to strong wind. Storage of the grafted trees where not shaded sufficiently. This caused the scion to dry out and die off. Being a tropical country, the sun here is extremely hot in the afternoon.

 I also notice in order to match the diameter of a medium rootstock, I find the scion to be quite hard and difficult to shape as it is 'woody'. I noticed the joint is not flat due to to the difficulty in shaping. This doesn't give a good cambium contact.

Went back to basic, the cambuim. Was the cambuim properly identify? Cambuim contact good?  

 

Source: http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lectf03am/

 Cut off some branches, rootstock and scion to inspect the cambium.

 Cambium is the layer just beneath the bark. Had identified that it's the thin translucent brown color layer. While studying these, I realized that my eyesight is not as good as it used to be. Must be due to my aging. Bought a magnifying glass to help. As Keningau is a small town, I only manged to buy a cheap 5 X magnifying glass.

Since am back to basic, why I wanted to graft Jackfruit? As I had identified Jackfruit grows in our local condition and is pretty drought resistance. Have 2 Jackfruit trees in our little farm and it only requires minimum care. Planning to propagate and plant Jackfruit on a small scale for it's fruit. Grafting can provide a good variety (clone) of planting stock and let it bear fruit earlier. Since I have 2 mother trees of J29 and J 32. Also had the 4 trees of J 33.

Next I have reorganize myself mentally. Grafting is not rocket science and had been done more that 2,000 years ago. I'm sure that I can do it successfully. My definition of successful is that I can emulate successful grafting of at least 85%. I shall most probably set a next target of 30% first as I'm still new in grafting.

Grafting should be easy, fun, non laborious and stress free. There should be a feel good factor as we are helping certain species to expand and propagate. It's creating more.

Decided to move out the agarwood seedlings to make way to store the grafted Jackfruits. As I have the section of the nursery repaired with a 90% shade. Also the agarwood is growing well and by moving it to another section of 70% shade helps on the 'hardening'. With the sufficiently shaded storage, hopefully it shall improve my successful rate. 

As for the hardwood being difficult to shape, was thinking that the scion can be of smaller diameter, younger thus easier to shape. While doing this, since the scion is a small diameter, why not cut the cleft off center according to the smaller size of the scion? Being off center, it can accommodate the the smaller size scion, yet matching the cambium on both sides.

Starting to wonder on the latex. Does the latex aid the cambium taking or does it creates a barrier and prevent? Notice that some have the scion and the grafting part had rotted. Some of the wrapped part died. Some bark grew uneven, bulge after wrapping. Am I applying to much pressure? Too much pressure and restrict the flow of nutrient? The scion died and the wrapped part also die and rot. Guess I shall reduce the pressure while wrapping.

After finishing off all the redo, I counted 12 that 'took' and a couples of 'maybe'. It was not as bad as I initially though. Thank goodness I fare better then the previous grafting. Even though it was not as what I targeted, I am grateful to have 12 new planting material. Just have to nurse these till they are good for field planting.

Summarize of my improvements
Keep grafted plants in a well shaded area. Water them if no rain for 3 days.
Plastic cover to keep the humidity high to be tie down, preventing them from blowing off.
Using newly developed scion and abstain from harden scion.Cut shaping shall be more flat and fit better.
Use a magnifying glass to help see better, hence able to match the cambium better.
Reduce wrapping pressure.
Thank goodness that I had managed to identify some of my short comings.

While redoing (after about 10 plants), I was pondering if there is a better chances of 'take'. After much research on the internet, I shall try out side veneer grafting, hopefully it shall improve my 'take'. Stay tune.

 

Repairing Nursery.

The Nursery had broken down and over ran with weeds after I came back to our little farm. Was away for about 3 months. It was erected partially with wood and bamboo. The bamboo had decayed and fell down. Our nursery was built in 3 stages, over a period of time. It started out very small and was extended. The last stage was the largest as we were seeding Gaharu (Agarwood).

Lots of the seedlings had also died due to the drought. With unprotected sun light, the seedlings just couldn't withstand.

Had managed to transfer all the surviving seedlings to ploy bags. With that cleared, I started to dismantle the shade first. Had to do it carefully as I hope to reuse them.

Dismantled and lay it on the ground so that I can roll it for storage. Have to use our field ladder as the height was above my head. Had a couple of falls as the ground was uneven and soft due to the rain. The shade gets easily hooked to nails, wood splints and etc. At times I had to cut out a section to dislodge it. Yet at the same time had to try to keep them in a long piece. If it's too short, then it's difficult to reuse.

 Saw off the horizontal frame and dismantle the nursery to half size.

Strengthen the vertical pole with "ram" earth. Secured the horizontal pole. As the wood tend to crack at the edge, I used wire to tie them up.

 Once I got the poles secured, I instal back the shade. I managed to reuse most of the material and the only 'new' material that I bought was the raffia string. I use the raffia string to secure the shade netting.

After completing the half size nursery, I found that I need to create a shade for the Gaharu / Agarwood seedlings too. So put up another section.

Managed to complete today, and had some time to spare. As I still had the energy, I cleared off a small section and did some cuttings from our lime tree. Trying to propagate more lime plants. The weather forecast indicates high chances of rain for the next 10 days.
I usually check the weather forecast everyday via weather-forecast.com . I find this good as it does give a 10 days forecast. Also there is a weather station very near to our farm.

Shall be busy tomorrow, gathering our produce and sending them down to the city the next day. On 21st Aug, my leave starts and shall be away for the next 9 days. Hopefully when I'm back, I can see the lime cutting propagate.
Only left with clearing off the weeds and our refurbished nursery shall be fully operational.