Grapes, grapes and grapes.

Feeling ecstatic starting on my journey into grapes. Was talking to a few friends and yes, team up to start a grape farm, here in Selangor, Malaysia.










Currently starting off with some cuttings and a couple of rooted plants. Plan to start off a small area, about 24 plants as mother tree. These shall contribute scions for future grafting. Currently already have Isabella, IAC, Jupiter and Dixon in hand. Would like to increase the varieties and see which perform best in lowland. I can still recalled that I killed 2 grapes plants before so am treating this with more caution.

My strategy is to establish a small size plot of mother tree. Create more planting material via cuttings for future planting. Area had been identified and work shall start pretty soon.



Grapes should be a good crop to compliment the Figs that we are currently having. In terms of marketing, it's just an add on. Production and care is pretty similar too, so our helpers should not find this too difficult.

Health benefits from Grapes are pretty high. And being a healthy fruit, it goes in line with our "Farm to Folk to Wellness" Eco-tourism concept.

This is also a good opportunity to showcase some of the products that I am an Ambassador of, such as MARDI BioRichar, BlackGold, AgroSol, BioJadi and etc. I only realized that on our packing of MARDI BioRichar there are grapes pictures on it.

 Some planning of establishing the planting.

 Sending some of the mother trees for dripping via fertigation.












The cuttings are very matured and can start flowering soon. Hope to get some grapes next year .
















As usual, grapes are not spared from pest. Would like to minimize the use of pesticide, almost chemical free so that my wife can enjoy the grapes, just like she is enjoying our minimal chemically grown figs. (my wife is a Interstitial Cystitis patient).

Happy Grape planting,. 

Bagging Of Soursop, Annona muricata .

Bagging up Soursop fruits. Was inspecting my soursop and found some infected with mealy bugs.

Mealy bugs on my soursop.

After having treated them with power multicide, it started me thinking, why not bag it up. I don't really need to do it now as my intention is just to produce seeds for sapling. Just for fun. I used old news print, 2 layers as I wasn't prepared.

I'll do it with plastic bag the next time, most probably a size of 20" X 12". Actually I had deviced a plan to bag up with plastic bags, which I tried on the Jackfruit. Punched a couple of holes on the lower edges for water drainage / ventilation. Punched small holes along the perimeter of the opening. String it up with a raffle string. Climb up, bag the fruit and just tie up.

Annona muricata L

From my research, blue colored bags are better as insects don't register this color much. Even with the old news print, I try to abstain from colorful prints.

Bagging I'm sure shall not solve all our problems. I'm sure it helps on the fruit flies. Still need to treat for mites & bugs. I guess I can expect nicer fruits, lesser blemish and lesser fruit flies attack.

It rained heavily plus strong wind the night after I bagged. Upon inspection in the morning in the morning, I found 2 bags had fallen. When I'm back at the farm, shall redo after my vacation.