Parcel 1, Measurement & Preparartion For Banana Harvest.

The largest tree at the left.

Did a measurement of our rubber trees at Parcel 1. Taken at 1 meter from ground level, smallest was 8 cm and largest was 16.5 cm in diameter. These are for the grafted trees that were planted by us. All the smaller ones are the survivor of coccidae attack. I would guess that we maybe be slightly below specification. Had taken steps to improve our status. We did another round of fertilization with commercial grade fertilizer, covering the whole area, to the fringe of the Parcel. We had a spray of EM (effective microbes) to improve the soil condition. We had just managed to do this before the rainy season start. On the fringe of Parcel 1, we found the biggest rubber tree planted by our partner before we came in. It's a huge one, estimated to be 35 cm in diameter. How  I wish that all trees are this size, but sad to say, there is only 1. We are trying to access why this particular tree is growing that huge, It was planted about 1 or 2 years earlier on virgin ground (undisturbed top soil). All the neighboring tress are still very thin, thinner than our grafted trees.

We added 20 trees of Berangan Banana at the fringe, near to the site of the abandon shed. There are some fruits trees here. A rambutan, jambu air and a couple of lime trees. We hope to generate more Berangan (higher value) sucklings to replace the current bananas. We also too the opportunity to made some cuttings of the lime tree to bring back to our nursery. Hopefully we can transplant it back to parcel 1 in a couple of months.

There is a rubber tree, suddenly drying off. The upper trees are gone. The tree turns harden, dries off, and decay as dry wood. Do not really know what is happening to it. We cut off the top till the stem had not harden and that still produce latex. Shall monitor this next month. Hope this is effective. This is different from the Dry Bark Disease on Parcel 2. Hope to find out what is wrong and what is the appropriate action to take soon.




Explored the fringe of Parcel 1, there is about less than an acre of land here. Making plans to clear and plan. Clearing may be a bit difficult as it's the rainy season. May have till wait till next year to start work. We have lots of options here, we may go for rubber trees or even fruit trees. As the land here is not terraced and has a good top soil, the potential is enormous. Entering this to the do list 2012 project.

We are almost at the end of the year. The Banana trees planted earlier has bear fruits and we are harvesting. Special thanks to our pioneer co-coordinator. We are thankful that he had shown us the direction. However, we wished we should had planted the whole parcel with Banana. Anyway we are expanding on the Banana and moving up market. Our new planting are of higher grades of Banana, Berangan type. Hopefully we shall have a higher value and grade of harvest soon.


Our first harvest was a failure cause we do not have the experience to check for maturity of the banana, over anxious and harvested too early. We could not sell off our produce, mainly due to buyers rejecting our banana because of maturity. It was a good lesson. We manage to enlist the help of a friend to help us sell off, by using carbide to ripen the banana. We manage to recover only about 30% of the first harvest. Our friend also help to train us to harvest the banana and help us sell off the produce as he has a small stall. As the produce is just starting, and not much, we supply him all our bananas for the moment.
 Once our harvest grows, we shall have to look for a market. We are modifying our processing of banana at site so as to save space & weight on transport. The waste can also be left to compose at the farm, to be reuse as fertilizer. We are learning to process as this is the first time of what we hope to be a regular affair.

A Day At Parcel 6

We started off early as with previous visit as we are doing some rubber tapping. The yield is higher if tapped in the early morning due to the cooler weather (the latex coagulate slower). We can not take it to the max as these are only for trials. Tapping should be done before daylight (anytime after 1 am) and fixed to a regular time. Our helpers also found that we have to make a thicker cut, as opposed to the fine cut. Reason is that we do not tap these trees on a regular basis. I noticed that the leaves are falling for this area. Shall monitor how long it last. Our neighbor at the rear had stopped tapping due to the leave fall, they had turn the collection cup over to prevent water storage. We had a higher yield than the previous visit.
We had finished planting banana trees for the half lots. Today we planted more than 100 banana trees. Hoping to have a bounty of harvest. With a combined harvest, we hope it shall be feasible to ship it to the city for a higher value.

A check on the ground nuts shows goo results. Estimate maybe more than 90 % germinated. Ground nuts required low Nitrogen fertilizer, otherwise it shall form less nuts. We applied Chicken dung this time as we want the vegetative growth first, also we did side dress with a higher dosage as most probably is the only time we are fertilizing it.

Could only find 4 pumpkins germinated from our second seeding. Wondering what gone wrong wrong.
Check on those first seeding, was surprise that we found more, some had just germinated, having only 2 to 4 leafs. 
Am suspecting that the seed are hibernating and would not germinate due to insufficient moisture / water. This area did not experience much rain lately. Another option, we could try germinating, and transplant, buy with no water at site, the new plants might die off due to drought. Guess we shall wait for another 2 weeks to see if we have more germinates. In the mean time, planning to try other crops like Field Corn and Sweet potatoes, which are more drought resistance. Shall also source for more ground nuts seeds as we had ran out.

This parcel 6 is particularly windy. Most of the rubber plant-lets are blown side ways. Beginning to stake the plants but ran out of strings. Shall have to continue on the next visit. We need to straighten the plants so as to have a straight and clean trunk. This shall provide a bigger tapping area.
Hope to see better results on our next visit.