Soursop, Annona Muricata

Soursop, Annona Muricata, also know as Durian Belanda in Malaysia. We have a Soursop tree in our little farm, that wasn't planted intentional. I only noticed it a few months back and was told by our helpers that it's a Soursop tree. At one time, it was infected with caterpillars and the leaves were eaten off. We had the caterpillars removed manually and the tree quickly bounce back healthily.
Recently there were request for the soursop leaves as it's said to help in reducing high blood pressure. I myself tasted the tea, and find it refreshing with a nice aroma. A search on the internet, claims that it helps in insomnia, diarrhea and even claims that it cure certain cancer.
From my perspective, the soursop is drought resistance and hardy. It is a smaller tree, can be inter-crop with bigger trees like avocado (which we are working on) as it can tolerate growing in partial shade. This shall fit well into our rubber plantation (in-between terrace). I think there is a demand for soursop as fresh fruits and I don't think it's grown on a commercial scale in our area.

Since there is a tree in our farm, we are looking into ways to propagate it.
We had a few cutting made and see if it grows. Shall be looking for seeds and try germination. Looking for the sweet variety as we intend to plant it as fresh fruits. In the meantime shall also check out if there is a market segment for the leaves.

The Soursop tree next to the black water tank.

Had the tree pruned today and used the cuttings for propagation. Shall have update after my vacation. Stay tune for updates.

The Soursop cuttings with roots enhancer.

Our Soursop after pruning.

Starting to flower. We can most probably obtain scion for our grafting soon.

Project Agarwood / Gaharu

Agarwood, Eaglewood, Uod, Oodh, Gaharu or 沉香 are some of the names that I manage to find. Our Agarwood project was mooted after I discovered a couple of surviving small plant-lets surviving overgrown weeds and our herbicide spray. We managed to 'rescue' about 10 of the plants. This gave me the idea that since it's so hardy, we can plant this in our rubber plantation, on the high gradient slope, that we would not be able to plant any other trees.

  Our expectation is to use this as a supplementary crop, for land that we can not use. Plant and maintain it for 6 years and above, then inoculate it and harvest it after 2 more years in stages. The older the tree, the greater the wood volume and more resins after inoculation. From the details that I mange to gather, it should be a calculated risk if we manage to plant Agarwood with a very low cost and on land that is idle. I feel that Agarwood has been wrongly projected as a 'get rich fast' scheme, which I'm sure does not happen in agriculture. It's being linked to the word 'Millionaire' and this I guess create the big misconception.

With the 'Millionaire' tag and a high projected revenue, the seeds, sapling and inoculation cost are charged at a high premium price in Malaysia. In order to keep the cost low, shall have to make our own sapling from seeds. My search took me to Thailand, and this supplier is able to offer a price that I am comfortable with. USD120 for a kilo of fresh seeds. Order one kilogram of seeds of the Aquilaria Subintegra type. Was told that one kilogram of seeds consist of about 4,000 ~ 5,000 seeds. Seeds are available (fresh) from August till October.

Instruction given was simple, keep the seeds fresh and plant as soon as possible. Soak the seeds for about 3 hours prior to planting. Germinate on a raise bed of about 12 centimeter, in a cool area,  planting it at about 1 centimeter deep with the tail up. Water daily. Germination can be expected in about 3 weeks. The germination rate depends greatly on the freshness of the seeds. Can be transplant into poly bags when it grows 2 to 4 leafs.
Lets hope we have high germination in the coming weeks.

New Nursery on the left.

 We prepared a nursery with netting shade of 90%. This 90% shades are quite heavy due to the closeness of the shade, Our initial form-work collapsed and our men rebuilt. The raise beds were also prepared.

 Our nursery were made too large as we do not know approximately what size was required. 1 kilo of seeds occupied only almost 1 raised bed. After planting the seeds, we found tracks of dog. Hence we quickly fence up the sides with a 30% shade. This shall also keep the chicken (neighbors) out. Chicken tends to scratch on the raised beds, displacing the seeds and reduce germination rate.

Some of the survived Agarwood trees of our trial. Most were rescued from weeds and herbicide.

Start pruning our bigger Agarwood. The idea is to prune it so that it produce a single large tall trunk. Bigger trunks can house "larger" resins when it form compared to small trunks and branches. The pruned branches, we kept and try to propagate the cuttings.

Hope that our Project Agarwood shall progress smoothly and be a success. Stay tune for more updates. 

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.