A visit to Parcel 1

Parcel 1, my favorite Parcel. This is the Parcel where it all started. Our road /plan for farming. When I was a kid, I dream of having a farm full of banana trees. Parcel 1, the easier accessed (out of the first 3. Our base station here.
A very peculiar tree, growing only vertically with no side brunch at all. Parcel 1 is doing rather well except foe the stolen trees. As Parcel 1 was the first that was planted, the trees in this Parcel are the biggest. Soil at Parcel 1 is also beginning to turn brown, which is good for planting. This shall open other opportunities for us as integrated farming.

Another tall tree, but this was trimmed. Trimming / pruning the lower brunch so that the tree shall grow taller faster, lesser brunch, ease tapping in the future. Time for the next round of fertilizer in June. This time, we shall have to increase the quantity of fertilizing. Hope these tree shall be growing fast.

Other development in Parcel 1 is that the Banana trees that we planted had begin to bear fruits. Once it is harvested, we can start re-planting it's sucklings. Planting more cash crops, it maybe able to supplement our expenses. Shall be planning to plant more Banana trees in Parcel 1, then expand to Parcel 3. We have 4 varieties of Banana, Berangan, Pisang Emas, Cavandish and those that they use to make goreng pisang. Let's hope that we shall have plenty of Banana harvest by next year. We'll need to have more harvest per time as to cover our transportation as our farm is in "off" location.

Our helpers had started to experiment planting of white chillies and it seems to be thriving well. Shall most probably expand on these. This is also a cash crop that can be harvested in a couple of months. Last check the ex-farm price is $ 15 per kilo. Shall be leaving some to ripe to be use as seeds.

Our helpers are also experimenting with groundnuts and seems to be thriving too. Proper planting distance shall be 3 X 4 feet. This shall leave some space for the groundnuts to flower, ripe and drop to the ground. Without space to drop to the ground, no groundnut shall be produce. Let's see how much groundnuts it shall produce. Shall plan after we review the harvest.

Sweet potatoes, a hardy vine type of plant. Can be used as ground covering (preventing weeds ), young leaves as vegetable and the roots for food. We are still looking for the Japanese strain, (purple color skin and purple color roots. Ours now is a mixture of purple color skin, yellow roots and yellow skin, yellow roots.

Our helpers are trying long beans too. We are leaving the beans for seeds.

This is what had became of our failed ginger patch. Shall have to clean up the weeds and find the ginger. I guess just a couple survived.

Our chicken coop. Plant to start a large colony of free range chicken here. Last picture shows some young chillies trees in between the rubber trees.