Updates on plants that we had planted back in March.

The ginger plant had been transplanted successful. We had planted two types, Chinese Ginger and Village ginger. Both looks good after transplanting, but we do have some young plants dying on us, which I guess most probably we could have damage the roots while doing the transplant. Checked on our ginger plant nursery, there are still some ginger plant sprouting, especially from the sawdust covered patch. I did some transplanting few days ago on some new sprouting. I find that the roots had grown into the soil and it makes trans planting difficult. I would propose for our next germination, we shall a 5~6 inches sawdust bedding first, then lay the ginger flat. I think it shall have a higher/faster yield. Had dinged up the deeper ginger, relocated to the top and it's sprouting now.
The groundnut patch is on the upper left of the 1st picture. It's growing well and pretty green. It has started to flowered. Groundnuts shall be produced when the flower withered and drop (bend) down to the ground. There are instance where you see healthy growing plants, but no nuts. Hope that ours shall have big and juicy groundnuts and ginger.

Yam, these are growing well and should be as there were (and still) lots of wild yam before. Yam is easy to plant and do not need much care. We had add another 60+ Yams on the other side of the stream.
Corns, the Thai Super sweet (white maize) is a failure. It's growing so slowly, skinny and not consistent. Some is fruiting, some is not growing, some dying and lots of no growth. Lots of weeds in the area, are doing some weeding but don't think it'll help much. Failure could be lots of possibility as we are planting village style. Guess we shall most probably finish off the left over seedlings and stick to chicken feed corn.

The Chicken feed corn (red color maze) is doing well and growing steadily and consistently. It's growing faster than the weeds and not much care is needed.

Pineapple, surprisingly some are bearing fruits. We had planted about 20 plants, just for testing and maybe create some plant-lets. Guess we shall not buy the pineapple hormone this time as it's the first planting and only a couple is fruiting, hence it's not economical to buy.
This area is a low laying area and has a pool of stagnant water. It drown even the hardy Chicken feed corn. We had dig a drain to drain off excess water. Shall weed off the weeds in a couple of days and have a better picture on what to be done here.
More updates on the progress of the farm in the coming days.

Back to Farming

First day, back to farming, after a long break. It's so tiring, even simple chore of lifting the Cangkul seems like lifting a ton. It was raining for the whole morning, good for us as we are doing new planting. This shall keep the new plant from being dehydrated. We are now working on Parcel 5. Parcel 5 is a 4 acres plot of relatively flat land with a small creek running through the middle, cutting off the land into two almost equal half. This piece of land was planted on before hence no need for heavy clearing. Still we are having trouble clearing it of some heavy grass, tapioca, wild yams, wild bananas & etc.

A panoramic sweep of Parcel 5. We can only see half of the parcel from this point, as the other is seperated by the creek. Anyway, we shall concentrate here first. We are planning to plant Banana, Yam, Corn and some vegetables here. We had started a Ginger patch beneath a tree.

Only a couple start growing. The first batch of corns are growing nicely. This is the Kampung variety, grow for chicken feed. We are testing out some Thailand Hybrid Sweet Corn too.

We had also planted some tissue culture Cavendish banana.

Saw some massive sized earthworms while clearing the land of tapioca. It's about 12 mm in diameter, maybe I'll catch a few of these and breed them in a worm bin. Have to start planning on how to built a worm bin.
Need to have an early night as I'm exhausted.