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,. 

GEM Avocado

 GEM Avocado, NOT G.E.M. Gloria Tang Sze-wing, the hot singer 😂

 Hass is the King of Avocado, GEM is the princesses of avocado (great-granddaughter). The GEM variety was developed by University of California Riverside researchers and named after a technician that help developing it, initials of Gray E. Martin. The new variety actually was patented and released in 2003.

 Lots of reference shall be made in comparison to Hass as GEM was develop to be better / differentiate / fill in the void.

The Gem avocado tree is a semi-compact, vase shaped tree that bears the fruit mostly in clusters interior in the tree, GEM is also a more consistent producer. Gem avocados hold particularly well on the tree.

 GEM has several of the positive attributes of Hass, including taste, size, color, productivity and seasonality, also matures later than Hass thus extending the season. GEM is described as "a little more oval or egg-shaped than Hass. It has the speckling on the skin. As it ripens, it will turn dark, and a lot of times the speckled lenticels will get a golden color speckle to it." This lenticels is actually pores through which gases are exchanged.

In taste tests conducted by Westfalia Fruit Estates, a South African company marketing GEM worldwide, the avocado variety scored better than Hass in terms of eating quality. Other surveys shows that it's as good as/ even better than Hass. Retail markets varies and in EU & US selling price is at premium compared to Hass due to the lower planted acreage.

A very promising variety of avocado for commercial planting.