DumbFalang

In a thread that I started a few weeks back...

... I offered to give away 5 boxes of Strawberries grown at my wife's Strawberry farm without the use of chemical based pest and disease sprays. The offer was done at very short notice and not many TV members had the opportunity to make it to Central Airport. This time I am giving a bit more notice for anyone that is interested in collecting a free box from either Central Airport, Central Festival or anywhere convenient on route between Samoeng and the two shopping centres some time this afternoon.

The berries are still on the plants as I type so I don't know how many boxes we will be able to give away but probably around 20+

Please PM me to reserve a box for today or let me know that you'd like a box but can't make it today. We will try to do the same again another day this week. Existing Customers are welcome to come collect a free box too ;-)

I will update the thread around 10am after picking.

16 hours ago, trainman34014 said:

If you want organic you have to find an organic farm first, they are around, and then see how they go about things and judge for yourself.  However; it's hard to find a farm that grows all the veggies you want in the same place.

 

As for pre-packed and marked organic; well, wherever it is would you ever trust Thai's to be on the level with you for anything ?   I don't; it's sad but you learn from a great deal of experience once you have lived here a few years.   The psyche is mainly fixed on money and your health and life, or anyone else's, local or Foreign, are simply of no interest to most business people here.  Rather similar to how much they care about their Environment...nothing !

+1. This pretty much sums up the fresh food market in Thailand.

Strawberries aside, for those of you who are serious about what you eat, I just want to point out that there is a Farming in Thailand section on this forum and a sub forum about Organic farming.

I find one TV member in particular to be very knowledgeable and helpful and his forum name is DrTreeLove. Check out this thread for starters...

11 hours ago, balo said:

 

Why do give them away ? Not interested in business ?

 

kkerry figured it out ;-)

It's my wife's business and a hobby to me. We both enjoy peoples reactions when they taste our Strawberries so 5 boxes is not a big deal - regardless of any future business that may come from giving them away.

If anyone is not comfortable receiving anything for free, then drop into the farm next time you are in Samoeng and I'm sure the missus will be happy to take your cash

4 hours ago, Formaleins said:

So even organic means absolutely nothing here.

Actually it does mean something very important to Thai farmers. You can charge much more for your products!

OK - I'm going to put my money where my mouth is and give away 5 boxes of 'safe' Strawberries to the first 5 Thai Visa members who PM me to reserve them for collection at Starbucks in Central Airport between 2pm and 3pm (it's buy one get one free day at Starbucks).

You can also reserve them if you can collect anywhere on the main roads between Samoeng and Central Airport in the next few hours ;-)

8 hours ago, NancyL said:

So, you see, it takes a level of sophistication to use these chemicals that most Thai farmers don't have.

 

You've hit the nail on the head there NancyL. They need education and guidance - which costs money. Money which is maybe better spent on a submarine to protect us from erm.... erm - something more dangerous?

3 minutes ago, opalred said:

i never eat 

many years ago grew in oz the sprays you had to do was unreal 

some bad  sprays had a withholding period of 7 days by law

 you have to pick them every 2nd day work that out

....and to make matters worse - I've been told that most pesticides in use over here have been banned in other countries.

My house looks over several farms and we talk to the farmers daily. They often spray in the evening (we smell it) and pick the following morning. The most fascinating part is that some of their products are sold as organic.

16 minutes ago, moe666 said:

Who really wants to eat a strawberry which is in name only. The worst tasting things I have ever tried never ripe and to small to enjoy

My thoughts exactly but there are a few people above who obviously disagree. There are also millions of Thai's in Bangkok who dip sour strawberries into sugar and know no different.

1 hour ago, Trujillo said:

The OP does not state any facts or support his mention of "toxic" pesticides. No names, no labels, no peer-reviewed studies of effect, doses and exposure. 

Guy should work at CNN. 

The aim of the thread is to make people aware of what goes on in the Strawberry growing industry in Thailand. If just one person does their own research and makes a decision not to eat Strawberries from an untrusted source, then it will have been worth my time and effort.

Did you read the Thai Visa editorial from the link I posted above?

One sad thing we don't get to hear about much is the long term damage that it does to the poor workers using the spray machines. These people probably have little knowledge of how dangerous the sprays are and even if they knew, they'd probably still have to do it because they need the money.

Of course, similar sprays are used on a lot of other fruits and vegetables and they are best avoided too - if you care about that sort of thing.....

If you don't, then Mai Pen Rai ;-)

The wife and I moved away from BKK to Samoeng just over a year ago to take things easy and grow a few 'clean' vegetables. Things never seem to work out the way you plan and we somehow stumbled into starting a Strawberry farm. We've learned a lot about how the locals grow Strawberries and it's been an eye opener as far as the use of toxic sprays goes.

We made the decision to use only organic pesticide and fungicide sprays and as neither of us can carry 20 litres of solution on our backs, we use local labour to get the job done. 'How much does this organic stuff cost you'? the locals are quick to ask. When we tell them it costs Bt600 per session, they are shocked and then offer us advice on how we could get the job done for just Bt60 with the toxic equivalent.

The shop we buy from told us that they had never sold organic pesticide products to a Strawberry farmer before - and a lot of their Customers grow Strawberries. I'm sure there must be other Strawberry farms out there that do not use toxic sprays, so if you enjoy your Strawberries at this time of year and value your health, then it's well worth doing your research so you don't get caught out.

Thanks for sharing. I have the wife checking out Netafim but she can't find anything on the web site or Facebook page at 10cm spacing which is what we need for Strawberries. She'll probably end up giving them a call.

For Strawberries, we have no interest in the cheapest fertilizers - we just want the best. We charge a lot more for our berries than other growers so all decisions are driven by quality and not price.

I will check out the other links - Thanks again ;-)

My wife has a Strawberry farm growing the Thai Royal 80 variety and I have a little 'experiment patch' in the garden growing a few different varieties of English strawberries. A couple of varieties failed to flower, a couple had fruit but the taste was nothing special and a couple are large (compared to the Royal 80) and very promising.....

The Brits are the two on the right. The challenge now is to get them somewhere near the sweetness of the Thai variety and I know that won't be easy.

My Raspberries taste simply awesome and there's not really much more to say.

I know Mulberries are not very popular with many people, but I have a soft spot for them as they were the first fruit I ever grew myself and I still remember clearly how good they tasted. My missus makes Mulberry plus Strawberry and Mulberry conserve without any additives (other than 10% organic sugar).

Not a drop of toxic spray has been anywhere near our fruit - and people can tell when they smell and taste it. I feel really sorry for Thai consumers who have absolutely no idea how dangerous Thai Strawberries on the supermarket shelves are.

My Blackberries have done nothing at 500 metres so we are taking them up to 1000 metres to see how they go.

Thanks for all of that info - I'll need some time to digest it ;-)

I do have a balanced Nutrient Concentrate but unfortunately it increases the pH rather than decreases it. On top of well water that is pH7.4 - I thought it would make sense to add some acid. After all the advice I've received on this thread I am now pretty happy with what we are doing - so Thanks to everyone who chipped in.

Scoop1 mentioned EC, which I noted while doing research but have not had the time to look into. Should I be considering buying an EC meter when growing in soil or is it something that is more for hydroponics?

I will do the 'quick and dirty' soil test but we have decided to take water and soil samples to Mae Jo University to get the job done properly.

The shop we buy most of our products from is across the road from Mae Jo Uni in Chiang Mai. It doesn't have an English name so check out the map on her Facebook page at th-th.facebook.com

The Yara Calcium Nitrate was around Bt500-590

Don - you should have a chat with my wife (she speaks English albeit with a Mancunian accent) and she'll tell you where we get many of the things (in Chiang Mai) you mention in your post. Please PM me for her phone number.

I planted a few last week just down the road from Chiang Dao in Samoeng, so let's see how they go. We have more down at our nursery in San Pa Tong so I'll find out the price and let you know.

JungleBiker nailed it with the algae - the tanks are not properly protected from the light. A pump room is on my growing list of things to do. It will be interesting to find out what you learn from Netafim.

I screwed up again. I added Sulfuric to tank A..... with my Calcium Nitrate . Anyway, I've decided I don't want to use Sulfuric because at 98% - it's a serious accident waiting to happen. I'm going back to Nitric and need help to balance my cocktail.

Here is what is in my Calcium Nitrate...

In a perfect world where my well water had a pH of 6, I would add 3000g of Calcium Nitrate to my A tank. In the real world, my well water has a pH of 7.4 and I need to add approx 6-7 litres of Nitric Acid to reduce the pH to an acceptable level. I have learned from you guys that the irrigation water pH should be 5.5 - 6.5 after adding my fertilizers.

So, my plan is to reduce my Calcium Nitrate to compensate for the additional Nitrogen provided by the Nitric Acid. I understand how to do that, but what I need you guys to tell me is how do I bring the Calcium level back up to where it needs to be?

I slept through most chemistry classes at school and it's come back to bite me ;-)

I do have filters but not too sure of the type. Flushed yesterday and will now get the staff to do it on a weekly basis. We found algae build up in the mixing tank and the problem was we did not cut our plastic down the middle of the rows like most others do, so we could not see the drip tape. I have now cut down the middle and exposed the tape so I can see what's going on. The emitters are facing upwards. Some had algae around them and a small number were blocked.

Basically - all beginners mistakes that we are working to fix and luckily not too much damage done (just a few dry, half dead plants).

Dirt beds....

but unfortunately I don't know the pH of the soil.

Also, I discovered it is Sulfuric Acid we have just bought and not Phosphoric Acid. Got a problem with parts of the the drip tape clogging up so just about to go clean everything.

Correct - I am growing Strawberries in soil. I do add trace elements to my stock tanks. This is the first crop grown in the field for several years so although I think many trace elements may be present, it was a rush project and I didn't have time to get the soil tested. I understand that everything is guesswork without soil tests, but that's the way it is at the moment.

We are one of the very few farms in Samoeng that have actually been able to produce fruit this year, so I know I am quite close to getting things right. I am following guidelines on fertigation from Australia and USA but none of my research came across the topic of adjusting the pH of water.

I found some Phosphoric Acid (98%) so I'm going to do some testing and come back to you guys for advice. The Strawberries are just coming to the end of their first harvest so we will be stripping the plants down and preparing them for the second and main harvest in February. I think I'll stick with Nitric until the first flowers appear.

Just as a side note, a few of my English Strawberry varieties are currently fruiting and two varieties in particular are very exciting. The fruit is huge already and we are eagerly awaiting the first taste test in a few days time. First Raspberry ripe today too but no signs of anything from my Blackberries.

My current setup is two 100 litre stock tanks and two 500 litre 'mixing' tanks. I fill the two mixing tanks from the well with water that is currently around 7.2pH. I then manually scoop 2 litres from each stock tank and add it to the mixing tanks. At a pH above 6, my plants were not going to absorb all of the nutrients so I decided I needed to reduce the pH of the water.

What I did was to fill a 500 litre tank with water and keep adding Nitric Acid until the pH reached 5.8. I multiplied the amount by 100 to match the concentration of my fertilizer mix in the stock tanks with the understanding that when I add my usual two litres of stock water, the amount of acid would reduce the pH to the desired level.

To my surprise, when I tested the pH of the water in the mixing tank after adding the stock water, the pH was 6.8. The only assumption I could make was that one or more of the fertilizers was raising the pH. Now I don't know whether I need to add more acid or leave things as they are?

I have Calcium Nitrate and Potassium Nitrate in tank A. I have Potassium Nitrate, Magnesium Sulphate and Mono Ammonium Phosphate in tank B. The concentration of the Nitric Acid is 68% (serious stuff).

I don't like the idea of adding so much acid to my stock tanks so I'd appreciate any suggestions you guys have on improving my setup or correcting my mistakes.