Pest Attack.

Noticed that we have 6 rubber trees infected with Rubber Bark Beetle. These beetles in massive numbers attack the trunk of the rubber tree. The trunks has lots of waste from the beetles.

Arrangement has been made to manage the pest with pesticide. Thank goodness this was discovered early.

Our Gaharu is also being attacked by Heortia vitessoides. It's the larvae that eats up the leafs of the Gaharu. Continuous attack if not stopped, can kill the whole tree. These larvae usually start with the very young leafs and keep on until the whole tree if totally destroyed if the colony is large enough. Our helper informed us on this pest.

Arrangement has been made to manage the pest with pesticide.

Short Farm Working Tour

 Working Tour.

Just finished a short working tour and shall make my way home tomorrow morning to keep my family company. Even though it's a short tour, I injured my right hand, sprained my right wrist and had plenty ant bites (even at my buttock). It's too challenging as I had been idle for quite a while, now my whole body is aching. Most of the time, it's mind willing, but body unable. Almost all my target fell short as I was too tired half way through. Must be getting old.

Thanks to my partner, whom had kept things going during my absence. There were too many challenges for us to handle. We had some pretty dry, then pretty wet days, which hinder our access. Left with only 1 helper. Luckily my partner managed to recruit some part timers to tie us through. Had to fine tune our strategy to fit.

The most well kept is Parcel 1 due to it's location. Managed to control the weeds here and even did partial fertilization. We are reverting back to organic fertilizer this time, hope to supplement back some Trace Elements (TE) and Calcium Carbonate.

Had 2 fallen trees, due to termites infestation. We had these treated a few months back, but seems that the woody part had been eaten and with strong wind. Had these replace with Jackfruit trees.

Wild bees are abundant here, still harboring the plan to go into Bees Farming once the rubber tress can be tapped. We brought in lots of rejects papayas to feed the chicken and it attract lots of bees. They also loves over ripen bananas. Shall research more to find out if these are suitable for Bees Farming. I notice there are 2 types and I'm sure the big black ones are not suitable.

The initial Avocado (seeds, not grafted) are doing well. We'll see when can these flowers or I might graft onto these later. Did a check on the grafted Avocados, most of them are doing well, 1 missing, 1 died. Checked on the Soursop that were planted next to the access road. A couple died and some were covered up by land slides. Managed to replaced some of these.

Our Free Range Kampung Chicken is about 60 chicken strong now. We are targeting it to reach 200 before we decide if we want to take it to a bigger scale. These are some of the 2 days old chicks.

Parcel 5, our little farm, had culled some papaya trees. Our market does not accept the yellow flesh and doesn't like the round fruit types. As we still have lots of seedlings, we manage to replace some. It'll take a while before we can replace all. Seeds selection and multiple planting can minimize this. I had failed to emulate the papaya farm into our rubber plantation as the rubber trees canopy is getting large and blocking off the sunlight. We can only do it on new planting / land when the rubber trees are small. Harvesting is also a problem in hilly conditions / difficult access as papaya can be harvested twice weekly. Still Papaya has certain advantage over Banana as a cash crops in Rubber Plantation.

Managed to recover quite a numbers of seedlings / plant-lets. We have about 50 Soursops, 200 Agarwood, 150 Jackfruits, 100 Avocados and 50 Mangoes, a couple of Limes and a Durian. Some of the Jackfruits plant-lets are too large for rootstock. No sure if it can wait as I bought 4 Honey Jackfuits, which I had just planted for scion. Maybe have to plant these first, then do a field grafting. Managed to graft about 50 Avocados plant-lets. Hope that the successful rate is acceptable.

The pruning scissor gave way and I injured my right hand. Had been using this scissor for a couple of months. May had used it to cut too thick a scion. This is the dis-advantage of using forged / cast iron type. Bought a new one of MS steel to replace. MS steel shall bend, but not snap. The old scissor spring (straight wound) always falls off, and the hold (shut) broke off not long after used. The new one compare much better (maybe it's new & sharp).

 One afternoon, dark clouds looming and it rained heavily not long after. Well, had a productive week and I did all that I could, given the circumstances as I'm still worry about my wife. Have a few hours of rest and shall start my journey home, first light tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Propagating & Planting Soursop, Annona Muricata

The small plant lets at the back.

I tried to propagate some cuttings of the Soursop last December, none grew. Those that were propagated with seeds, brought back from my vacation in Saigon, Vietnam grew. I started them off on a shaded raised bed. Due to the hard shell on the seeds, it took about 4 weeks to sprout.
Some of the seedlings were destroyed due to the heavy rain. It gets up rooted, toppled & decayed. A covered nursery should perform better. A set back would be it required watering.  Even with this natural selection, I get more than a hundred plant lets. These were then transferred into poly bags. I choose to used the 6x9" size as I don't think that it shall grow large.

100 Soursop & 20 Agarwood.

Decided to plant it from seeds without grafting as I find that it can bear fruits in about 2 1/2 years. The tree in our little farm had born 3 lovely fruits. Tasted the 1st fruits and it's very sweet (ripe on tree). Sold off the second. The 3rd is a large one, and am selling it off. Should I decide to graft, then I could harvest scion from this tree.

Transferred 100 Soursop to Parcel 3 for field planting. We had clear a piece of land at the bottom of Parcel 1, next to the small river. It took us a while to prepare the land as we were short handed.

The planting took us longer than I expected as the land was recently cleared. The undergrowth had not decayed. It was also a bit rocky. The land was also undulating. Planted about 25 Berangan Bananas along the river side. Planted about 40 Soursop with a distance of 15 X 15'. This took us a full day. Guess we can still squeeze in a few more on the slope side. Shall have to do this on another day sometime next week. Estimate to have some remainder of about 50 plant lets. Shall keep these in the poly bags as we need to start our round of weed management & fertilization. Most probably shall transfer them into a bigger size bag. If we still have not plant them soon, maybe I shall use some of them to tried out on grafting.

Soursop Number 1, ripe on the tree.

Spoken with my buyers and they says that the demand is growing. According to them customers uses it as fresh fruits and for juice. This may be due to the health benefits of soursop, it's getting more widely know. The pulp & leaf of Soursop shows strong evidence in cancer cure. I like the aroma of Soursop, the fruits I only like the sweet type. I had also used the leafs to boil tea, It taste good with a strong aroma of soursop. I used the 3rd till 5th leafs from the tip.

Had been thinking of Carbon Footprint lately. Since I had been planting so many trees, I guess I should have lots of Personal carbon credits.

Lets hope that these soursop grow vigorously.

Nursery At Our Little Farm

Had been working on our nursery since last year, after we planned on producing value added products for our farm. We started off initially producing banana suckling for our plantation. Our nursery had grown since then.

On the bananas, we now have variety which we like such as berangan, emas, kerling and saba. We also have other varieties which we shall discontinue as we feel that it's not suitable.

Our Chinese yam, sucklings are produce in-house. We are now at the 4th generation.

Papaya seedling are already in progress, we are now producing the Mas Solo varieties. Seeds were taken from the trees we planted back in April last year. First batch of about 150 plants had already been transferred into poly bags. Papaya seeds maybe the easiest to germinate.

The first batch of Agarwood, didn't went as smooth as anticipated. Due to the recent heavy rain, it's infected with Phytophthora fungal. Had already had some mortality. Punched holes on the poly bag to increase drainage. Organized and counted to be about 590 plants. Also I may had send it for hardening too early. Had put up a shade netting of D 70.

Soursop plant-lets are at the hardening stage, estimated to be about 150. May not be grafting soursop as it bear fruits quite early, about 3 years. This takes the longest time to germinate.

Jackfruits, we have plenty. I guess I was not successful on the grafting on the previous batch is that the rootstock could be too small. It should be at 'pencil' size. Had added another qualifier, that it should have mature leaves (3 lobed). Ao far had only managed 2 plant-lets, that was transferred to field planting. Another 5 in the waiting. Looks like I need to put in more effort here.

We now have 3 types of lime. The numbers of plant-lets is only at 14.

Rubber seedlings, estimate to be in the region of 350. I tried germinating 200 seeds. Had also pulled about 250 seedlings that germinated from the rubber plantation next door. Looks like we may not need to germinate, as it's lesser work, just to collect from the rubber plantation. Grafting, had not had any success yet.

Avocado, we are already on the 3rd batch. Had transferred about 40 successfully grafted plants to the field.

Other seedling that we are preparing are breadfruit, chempedak and manggo. There are still plenty more to learn. The numbers of successfully grafted plants are still low. Am working hard on it.  These shall keep me busy for a while. Planning to finish off my chaos and be home for the Chinese New Year celebration. Stay tune for our next update.

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.