Two weeks On

Pigs are having a nice time
There is major pig damage throughout the orchard - digging up areas under the breadfruit and on the edges of orchard with the neighbours who have long grass. Rod - a neighbour - was driving past and saw the pig - a very large boar - in our orchard and completely unconcerned by the traffic. He rang us when he got home - Digby was just getting breakfast for the guests, so he got the gun and went off to see if he could shoot it. Alas, long gone.

Fertilising after the mangosteen crop
The mangosteens have now finished - there were the odd small ones still to be found scrabbling around under some trees. So now we are concentrating on feeding the trees to replace the nutrients from the fruit which has been picked and removed from the system. Last year, DPI researchers were able to give the exact nutrient breakdown for a mangosteen, so we could actually calculate the weight of fruit, and then the exact fertiliser load. Our main problem is we need large amount of potassium, which does not come easily in organic form. However we have managed to find a premixed blend which is organic certified which will fill the gap.

New mangosteen seedlings refound
Before we left to go overseas in April, we planted out 20 small new mangosteen seedlings in the back corner of the farm. We had tried to grow Salaks there, but they were not happy in the red clay soil, so we pulled them out to replace them with the mangosteens. All these seedlings were now hidden in 2 metre grass, and it was difficult to find them. One tree was accidentally slashed in the search and will have to be replaced. I guess I should be happy it is only one. I have been spending time down at the local grocery store digging around in their rubbish to extract the cardboard to use as mulch. This should keep the grass at bay for 12 months.

Pruning the breadfruit
Digby is madly pruning the breadfruit. I can't bear to look - high up the tree, hanging on with one arm, and using a chainsaw in the other. The pruning needs to be done now to give the trees time to recover before the next harvest in 2007. The idea is that by cutting the tree from a 20 metree tree to a 3 metre tree, the fruit will be easy to pick. The worry is that there will be no fruit at all.