Project Papaya V3.1 An Update

The 3rd batch 1st planting. The 3 Mas Solo, with fruits awaiting ripening.

Our 3rd batch of trial was started back in April and now is on the 8th month. As we plant in stages, we have tress in ranging from small to awaiting ripening. The last batch planted were in November. The 3 confirmed Mas Solos are awaiting ripening. From these 3 trees I was trace back approximately how many Mas Solo that we are having. Some of the characteristic that I had observed are, short height, sturdy fat trunks, and on the trunk where the leaves had fell off, it developed into an eye sharped marking in purple color.

2nd planting was close to our pond. The clay soil here is very hard and being a bulldozed ground, there were no top soil. We had quite a number of plants dying off, due to the drought. Some were replaced many times yet still not successful. There are only about 15 trees here, and of various stage of growth. I find that this the most challenging area as the ground and weather was at it most unfavorable condition. Even though it was close to the pond, the pond dried up during drought season.

3rd planting was at the most fertile ground, and close to the creek. Unfortunately as with the pond, it dried during drought. We have about 20 trees here and all of them are waiting to ripe. The trees have quite some fruits, but unfortunately due to the drought, quite a numbers are irregularly shaped and not fully developed. We shall most probably sell these off as green papaya or use the fruits for seeds. Most of the trees here are Mas Solo.

4th planting was done, inter-cropping with pumpkins. We had initial watering problem and many died during the drought. Here we ran into weeding management as there were pumpkins too. With the pumpkin harvested and out of the way, things got simpler. We did plenty replanting. This area is the largest and were split into 2 part, lower and upper. The lower section were planted first. The variety here are mostly from our local mother tree, and some maybe even Kampung variety. We may have up to about 200 trees here.

5th planting was done along the access road, just behind the row of Berangan banana. Again due to the drought, there were plenty replacement. Some of the trees here are Mas solo. After this planting, we continued to plant here and there, where we find any idle land, or land that is not fertile. As papaya can withstand 'hot' fertilizer. We use lots of chicken dungs on our papayas. We had also transferred close to 300 papayas into Parcel 1. Lately most of these are for replacement.

We had stopped propagating papayas at the moment as we had lots of unhealthy seedlings lately. Not sure if it's due to the seed source or nursery bed. Another reason is that we are waiting for the Mas Solo to ripe and propagate them. We hope the Mas Solo taste sweet and is accepted by the market. We hope that the fruits shall ripe soon, germinate and transplant just before the the dry season.

Powdery mildew.

Checked with the agriculture department the other day as they were running an incentive scheme for fruits & vegetable. Unfortunately we do not qualify. Looks like we shall have to do it on our own.

The initial 30 plants, the productivity has dropped and we has lesser harvest. We are getting lesser ripe fruits as we are harvesting green papayas too. Those that are irregularly shaped, we harvest it as green papaya. The pricing is only half the ripe papaya.

1 papaya tree were heavily infested by Powdery mildew. Had it washed down with fresh water, removing almost all of the Powdery mildew. Shall give it some fungicide soon.

Trunk of Mas Solo.

Supposedly to e non seasonal, I find that there is a growth period, and a flowering period, hence fruiting period. It's probably depending on the weather (temperature and rain). This affects our production, a period with fruits, and a period with no fruit. Am thinking if we can control the fruiting to regular basis. Maybe irrigation helps.

Stay tune for more updates.

Trunk of the normal Papaya.

 

Failed Grafting

Came back to my farm on the 3rd December 2012, after attending MAHA 2012 and spent some time home with my family. Finished checking on all my grafting, Avocado, Jackfruit and Rubber trees.

My blistered hand, after a week of treatment with moisturizer.

Avocado, I did about 140 plants. I now have 20 plants that I feel is good. 40 plants that is budding and 20 plants on a 'maybe'. Those that I feel is good, I've loosen the grafting tapes and plastic bags. The budding and 'maybe' plants, I had remove the tie on the plastic bag, hoping to reduce the humidity. Removed weeds and those unwanted buds on the rootstock. This is to "force" the grafted buds to grow.

For those failed plants, I had put them aside. I find that maybe half of them can be reused, some need time to regrow and some totally 'dead'. I consider this as another failed run as I am targeting a 85% successive rate.

The failed Avocados.

Jackfruit, I did about 90 plants. Have 10 budding, and 4 'maybe'. I thought Jackfruit was the 'easier' one and I was totally wrong. Maybe it's due to the latex?

From the failed plants, I find that most of the scion dried and even rotted. Am still trying to diagnose what went wrong. Too young  rootstock? Wrong Technique? Bad scion? Too much tension on the grafting tape? From the failed plants I had quite a high numbers totally 'dead'. Another failed run.

The failed Jackfruits & Rubber trees.

Rubber trees. I did 6 of them, all failed. I tried 2 side veneer, 1 T-bud and 2 bark graft. This maybe be most probably due to the not so fresh scion. The scion was taken from our Parcel 3 and was left for a day ( water soak) before grafting. There were no damage to all the 6 plants, other than the part on the graft not "taking".

Guess I on the next coming week, shall savage the failed Avocado first as I feel that I have improvement on the Avocado.

Stay tune for more updates.

Grafting

Am doing some trial on fruit trees and in order to shorten the incubation time to fruiting, I have to look into grafting. Grafting can shortens the fruiting time to about 3 1/2 years as it takes on the traits of the mother tree (scion) which is already fruiting. Am doing some trials on grafting Avocado and Jack fruit seedling as these are seedling that I have germinated at the moment. I do not have any grafting experience and I started off just with some basic research on the internet.

Bought some tools such as pruning scissors ($18.00), grafting knife ($4.50) and some grafting tapes ($16.00)

Started my first grafting on a Jack fruit seedling back in August. Then tried grafting on rubber and avocado seedlings. These were down just to get some feel on grafting. I was figuring that it should not be too difficult as I see plenty people doing it when I bought my rubber seedlings rom Lembaga Getah nursery. There were lots of doubts especially when I snip off the top of the rootstock. Found it rather difficult as things are always not as ideal like the diagrams / instruction. My hands were also to 'hard' to do this fragile grafting, and my eye sight is also not sharp. Grafting was progressing very slowly. There were also my share of cuts, on my hands skin breaking due to pulling (tension) of the grafting tape. At night I feel muscle pain on my arms & palms.

 Finally manged about 20 grafting. Left these for about 3 weeks as I was away from my farm, on vacation. Come back and none was successful. Was thinking, well it is the first time.

 Did a second batch of about 60 seedlings on September, then went on vacation. Came back and was very happy as the grafted part is still alive. Thinking that it did not dried up after 2 weeks, it must then be growing. Estimated that I had a 65% successful rate, real good as it was only my second attempt.

 

  I released the grafting tape, thinking that it shall grow faster / better without it. It was a big mistake, as once release, lots of the graft come loose and as they started to dry up and wrinkle over a period of just a couple of days. I then tied back some of the grafts, but was already too late.











Ended up with lots of spoiled seedlings. As my grafting position isn't too low, I guess I can still try again on these seedlings.



Did further reading and find that cleft and side/modified veneer grafting should be easier for Avocado. Also since the weather is getting hotter, I read that protecting the graft with a bag, shall increase the humidity and prevent dehydration, allowing the budding to grow fast.

My mobile grafting station is a very simple set up. A stump of wood as a stool, which can swivel (my buttock). Tools, drinking water, hand phone for music entertainment, a pail of water to keep the scion fresh. All of these can be shifted when the sun change direction. A normal day, I shift about 3 times.

This time, I waited and saw buds starting out. Yes, this is definitely a bud and it is growing. I shall not make the same mistake that I did by removing the grafting tape. I watched it for 2 days, and removed the plastic as I was thinking that too high a humidity, it may rot the bud. It was big mistake number 2. All of the buds start to dry off and died.Most probably due to sudden dehydration. Again another case of over anxious.

Again what a waste. Have to re-do again, and hopefully the rootstock can still be used. I cover back some of the Jackfruit graft and hope that it shall grow. Been very busy finishing off those that can be grafted (still not very sure when to graft). Shall be away again, attending MAHA 2012 on the 22nd December.

Looking back from where I started, my confidence and experience had grown. There were a couple of times, I though of giving up, but because of the difference in fruiting time, I force myself to continue. I estimate that I had put in about 150 grafts effort, mostly re-dos, some up to 4 times on a seedling. Also with the next couple of projects on fruits and rubber trees, all these need to be grafted. The next in line shall be Soursop and lime.

Hope that when I come back after MAHA 2012, I can see good results of my effort.

Stay tune for more updates, MAHA 2012.

Project Jackfruit.

Looking into planting of Jack fruit trees. As there are 2 matured trees at our little farm, propagating should not be a problem. We started by collecting the seeds and germinating it on raised beds. I find that it germinate better with the seeds soaked for a couple of hours and planted in about 3 cm deep. The soil help to moist the seed, preventing it from drying up. Should the seeds dried up, it no longer can germinate.

I transfer it as soon as it germinate (once it reached more than 3 cm). The roots are deep and fragile. We carefully dig it up without damaging the roots. The survival rate is usually good. I guess we have more than 50 seedlings now.

Grafting the the seedling is difficult as there are latex once the stem is cut. Tried grafting on 3 trees, but had not been successful yet. I read that Cleft grafting and modify side veneer is more appropriate for Jack fruits trees. Cleft grafting give a very strong union and can withstand strong wind. Need to work on my grafting technique as I'm not getting it right yet. More on my learning of grafting on another post.

Some of the seedling should be right for grafting. It is suggested to be "pencil" thick, so I guess maybe 1.5 cm. Facing lots of obstacle in grafting due to my in-experience and learning through read ups and you-tube on the internet. Also the fear factor of damaging the root-stock.

The newer seedlings. Hopefully we could germinate many seedling, graft it then transfer to the rubber plantation, Parcel 1, 2, 3 and 6. Planning to plant it at the ridge and road sides. Jack fruit having tapper and deep roots should be able to withstand the strong wind. 

Project Papaya V3

We use to have a couple of these during my childhood days. Well guess things are not what it used to be. Had been having problem with the weather, causing drought and wet stress on the plants. Then there is pest infection as well as fungus infection.

 Our third batch trial on Papaya started back on April. Germinating the seeds I guess was the easy part. I have faster germination and higher germination rate by germinating on a raised bed. I prefer this method as I find that it suits my local condition better as our water supply is inconsistent. Raised beds retain more heat and moisture that small germination tray. I didn’t have much luck using germination tray. We had some problem with chickens (neighbors) scratching on the raised beds and ants carrying away seeds during the germination period. Heavy drops of water / rain also created problem like toppling the seedling. This can be taken care of by putting shading net over it, a few inches higher than the raised bed. My guys are doing this, but I took the lazy way out, doing the raised bed underneath a tree, and blocking it with whatever waste that is available, such as old wood, bamboo & etc.

 

This time, I transferred the seedlings to poly bags after they germinated with 2 to 4 leaves. It is very tender at this stage. I feel that I am getting higher survival rates after transfer as there are so young and adaptive, or maybe they are too naive and is easy to cheat. I find using poly bags of 6 inches diameter X 9 inches deep provides more space for the root to grow and retain more heat and moisture. We can keep the seedling to even to a foot tall in this size of bag. Also it’s not too large or heavy to transport for field planting. These seedlings are kept under a shade of 70%. Correct amount of watering at this stage is critical. Too much, fungus attack, too little it gets dried off. Depending on the weather and field condition, I transfer them to field at a height of 5 inches and above.

 Once transferred to field, irrigation is also very critical for the first two months. We encountered some problem as it was hot and dry during, then sudden rain for some time. Also we need to water the plants as sometimes it’s real hot. All these factors caused the stem to break up, infecting the stem with fungus / bacteria. This caused stem / collar rot. We had some plants dying, died. We try saving the plants but at the same time, planted another one next to it. 

We had some mealy bugs attack. Fruit flies are also a plenty. We had started to wrap up the papayas.

Then came Fungus attack, Anthracnose and Powdery Mildew.

 

We also tried planting about 200 papaya plants, integrating it with pumpkins. As we were short of workforce and it was left uncared for a while. The weeds had grown too long. We are having a tough time weeding them. It can only be done manually with hand, as we do not want to damage the pumpkins and papaya. The pumpkins had bore some fruits, but due to the dry season and long weeds, the harvest was mostly damaged but rats. The weeds did helped by shading the papaya and help keep the soil moist. Had started to clear the weeds, but plenty more to go. Don’t think we can

 clear it before I go off for may vacation. Had requested my helpers to follow through on the weeding and fertilizing.

 

We have some papayas starting to flower and started to have small fruits. Need to do some fertilizing. The 3 surviving Mas Solo are growing healthily. We hope for these 3 to bear fruits so that we can propagate more of these variety should it pass our screening. Was looking closely at the 3 Mas Solo, then went around the farm, am quite sure we have more of them as some of the seeds were mixed.

Special thanks to Michael J, whom had offered plenty advice.

Stay tune for more updates.