A visit to Parcel 1

Parcel 1, my favorite Parcel. This is the Parcel where it all started. Our road /plan for farming. When I was a kid, I dream of having a farm full of banana trees. Parcel 1, the easier accessed (out of the first 3. Our base station here.
A very peculiar tree, growing only vertically with no side brunch at all. Parcel 1 is doing rather well except foe the stolen trees. As Parcel 1 was the first that was planted, the trees in this Parcel are the biggest. Soil at Parcel 1 is also beginning to turn brown, which is good for planting. This shall open other opportunities for us as integrated farming.

Another tall tree, but this was trimmed. Trimming / pruning the lower brunch so that the tree shall grow taller faster, lesser brunch, ease tapping in the future. Time for the next round of fertilizer in June. This time, we shall have to increase the quantity of fertilizing. Hope these tree shall be growing fast.

Other development in Parcel 1 is that the Banana trees that we planted had begin to bear fruits. Once it is harvested, we can start re-planting it's sucklings. Planting more cash crops, it maybe able to supplement our expenses. Shall be planning to plant more Banana trees in Parcel 1, then expand to Parcel 3. We have 4 varieties of Banana, Berangan, Pisang Emas, Cavandish and those that they use to make goreng pisang. Let's hope that we shall have plenty of Banana harvest by next year. We'll need to have more harvest per time as to cover our transportation as our farm is in "off" location.

Our helpers had started to experiment planting of white chillies and it seems to be thriving well. Shall most probably expand on these. This is also a cash crop that can be harvested in a couple of months. Last check the ex-farm price is $ 15 per kilo. Shall be leaving some to ripe to be use as seeds.

Our helpers are also experimenting with groundnuts and seems to be thriving too. Proper planting distance shall be 3 X 4 feet. This shall leave some space for the groundnuts to flower, ripe and drop to the ground. Without space to drop to the ground, no groundnut shall be produce. Let's see how much groundnuts it shall produce. Shall plan after we review the harvest.

Sweet potatoes, a hardy vine type of plant. Can be used as ground covering (preventing weeds ), young leaves as vegetable and the roots for food. We are still looking for the Japanese strain, (purple color skin and purple color roots. Ours now is a mixture of purple color skin, yellow roots and yellow skin, yellow roots.

Our helpers are trying long beans too. We are leaving the beans for seeds.

This is what had became of our failed ginger patch. Shall have to clean up the weeds and find the ginger. I guess just a couple survived.

Our chicken coop. Plant to start a large colony of free range chicken here. Last picture shows some young chillies trees in between the rubber trees.

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.