A few weeks back, we wrote about a number of practical farming tips that could be useful to both hobbyists as well as commercial farmers. Here are a few more.
COMMON MISTAKE WITH BANANA – One grave and very common mistake that we often see in all the places that we have been to in the country is the overcrowding of banana clumps.
It is not unusual to see, for instance, more than a dozen banana plants in one clump or hill. This is very bad because overcrowding results in slender stems that don’t produce normal bunch. If ever they bear fruit, the bunch is usually small and the fruits are also small. Many of the stems may not bear fruit at all.
Experts recommend that only one or two stems are allowed to grow to maturity per hill. Normally, bananas will produce several suckers before they bear fruit. These suckers should be balled and planted elsewhere. If there is no place to plant the extra suckers, these could be given to people who would like to plant or they could be sold to interested persons. If not, they should be thrown away.
When the main banana plant is starting to flower, you might allow one or two junior suckers to develop to replace the mother plant when its fruit has been harvested.
GROW TOGETHER COMPATIBLE PLANTS – If you have a limited place to grow your favorite plants, you can maximize productivity by growing together plants that are compatible. We mean to say that you plant two crops in one patch of ground that will produce normal harvests.
We saw a very good example of this technique during the 30th anniversary celebration of East-West Seed Company in San Rafael, Bulacan. We saw in their demo farm sweet corn and Pipinito cucumber growing very comfortably together. The sweet corn plants were robust with developing ears. The Pipinito, on the other hand, was fruiting very well.
It is important to plant only one corn seed in one hill and the distance between hills should be about 18 inches. This will allow enough sunlight to penetrate the growing cucumber underneath.
BAG YOUR FRUITS – One major problem of growers of fruit trees like guava, pummelo, balimbing and others is the fruitfly. This insect deposits its eggs in the developing fruits and when the eggs hatch, they are the worms (larvae) that you often see in ripe guavas and other fruits.
Controlling the fruitfly by spraying with poisonous chemical is not advisable because of the residue that could be injurious to one’s health. One practical way is to bag the fruits from the time they are still small.
Our favorite bagging material is made of cloth. We bag our pummelos as well as our guavas and balimbing. This is an effective technique. If you don’t have cloth bags, newspaper may be used to wrap smaller fruits like guava and balimbing.
VIBRATOR FOR POLLINATION – In order for flowers to set fruit, they must be pollinated. In the open field pollination is usually done by bees and other insects. Wind movement could also effect pollination.
However, in the greenhouse there are usually no insects that will do the pollination. We saw a practical technique of pollinating indeterminate tomato plants in the greenhouse during our visit to the experimental farm of East-West Seed in Lanchang, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
We saw a lady worker with a vibrator going around the rows of flowering tomato plants with a hand-held, battery-operated vibrator. She places the extended stick of the vibrator on the flowering stems. That effectively does the trick.
There’s another technique that Ronald Costales does to pollinate his cucumber plants inside his greenhouse in Majayjay, Laguna. He places a colony of stingless bees he got from Milea Bee Farm in Batangas. The bees are also efficient in pollinating the cucumber plants.
There you are, here are just a few techniques that you could adopt in your own brand of farming.
For couples just starting or even retiring, please visit http://www.gregmelep.com for your housing needs.
No comments:
Post a Comment