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.

Parcel 6, AMonth Later.

It's been a month since we had started planting. We had almost finished planting the first lot. Did a checked and did a fertilization run. Our terrace method, planting style and technique had improved. Most of the plant-lets are looking healthy, except for approximately 60 plant-lets that had died off. Shall be needing about 120 to 150 more plant-lets to replace and plant some remaining area. By maximizing the plants per acre, we hope to get a higher yield. Banana had also been planted for a quarter of the lot.

We also took this opportunity to start trimming the branches as the plant were growing well. Only a couple of the pumpkin sprouted. We are also exploring what other crops we can plant on the edges of the terrace. Banana, papaya, sweet potatoes, groundnuts, pumpkin, chilli are some of the plants under consideration.

There are about 45 old rubber trees here. We shall be using it as a training and testing trees. We managed to do two test run and obtained about Five kilos of rubber clumps.

 Overall I think the results so far is very encouraging. Looking forward to our next maintenance sometime in December. In the mean time, am looking into planting more cash crops.

Parcel 6 executing.

Parcel 6 in the morning. Filled with fog at 7.00 a.m. It starts to clear by 9.30 a.m. I wonder if this is a daily event. It's so cooling with a small breeze blowing through the valley. We managed to saved some fruit and old rubber trees planted previously, about 50 of them. Planning to leave the old rubber trees for training of our tappers later on. In the mean time, one of our helper started to tap.

We had finally manage to terrace and cleared the said land. Now we have an immediate issue of land dispute, we have people now claiming to 'own' part of the land. These people are making big claim and demanding high compensation. We had forwarded this issue to the land department and as it's the Ramadan Month, they can only dispatch surveyor to check out the issue after the Hari Raya holidays. As the land comprise of 2 plots, we shall continue to work on the "safe" lot. We had started to plant banana trees. Bored holes for rubber trees and planting pumpkins. Other crops that we are planning to propagate are Sweet potatoes, Groundnuts, Papayas, Pineapples and Avocados. There is a small creek at the bottom of the valley, but the water run off is very small. After rain, there are pools of trap water. Am planning to build a Yam patch or plant any 'wet' plants.

Making of Parcel 6

Setting up Parcel 6 for execution. Parcel 6 is a hilly land going down a slope, possibly a stream at the bottom and raise up back the opposite hill. The shape is slightly rectangular. This is a failed farm that had been cleared 2 times before. There are also some rubber trees that we think is an encroachment. One side is a new rubber plantation (suspected encroachment). Second side borders a mutual rubber plantation and palm oil plantation. Third side is another mutual rubber plantation. Fourth side is the access road. This picture was taken at the corner of the first and fourth side.

We find this parcel to be easy access as there are already mostly tared road in placed, even thought it's not maintained fully. Only the last few Kilometers (maybe 3) are clay road. Since it's a failed farm, almost all big trees had been cleared, which translate to some savings for us. Our immediate priority now is to locate the marker stones, we found 1, still need to find the other 5 (comprising of 2 lots, total 6 markers). We shall need to verify the encroachment and if true, sort it out with our neighbor. We had planned to locate all the markers and mark again with a pole, painted with bright colors. This shall ease the clearing and terracing of the land. Had already fixed up with the clearing contractor who has some bulldozer nearby, ETA 1st week August. We plan to built a worker's quarter and a store on the fourth side (access road side). Confirmation of seedlings need to be done on August. We intend to go for high yielding clones. Once clearing has started, we intend to start planting. We plan to finish off latest end of December. Lets hope that all goes well.