Papaya And Banana

[Lickey]

Out of the 1200 papaya plants we planted last May. i would think only 30% have survived, the 1st prob was aphids, they were sprayed, Mosaic was next, again, sprayed, then leaf curl, sprayed, many have good fruits, but the lack of leaf cover has led to sunburn, rendering the fruit worthless, previously the ground had cassava on it 3 years ago, the papaya have been fertilised at regular intervals and a careful eye on problems has been on a day to day basis, but alas, ive given up on spending money on a lost cause, so when it starts to rain, we are going to have a tractor in and disc all into the ground and plant cassava, question is, can anyone forsee any problems with ploughing the plants in, or would you recomend removing them all from the field and burning them?

At the same time of planting the Papaya, we planted 800 banana culms, and more recently 400 more from the shoots, now, the first crop was 3 pick-up loads, now its down to half a pick-up, they get water and fertilizer on a regular basis, doing an web study i found that it is common practise of banana farmers to leave the mother culm and ONE of the rest growing round her, to me it seems feasible that the mother can put more effort into making fruit than growing possible useless sideshoots, BUT, my mrs says no, the Thai way is to let all grow!! any ideas on this one please, to remove or not to remove? TIA, LIckey..

[Pond Life]

I cant remember where I read it, but this is what I remember about Bananas.

When the main trunk is at fruiting age there should be 3 trunks total.

1 fruiting, 1 medium, 1 sprout, anything else should be cut down.

When you collect the fruit, leave the old trunk standing, the remaining nutrition will be reabsorbed by the other 2 trunks.

What prices are you getting ?

I gave up trying to sell the small quantities of Bananas & Papaya I have,

[Lickey]

Hi Pondlife, Prices,, Ladies fingers and the next size up, 5bht a hand, Buyer cuts,collects and transports, if we done that ourselves, i would think to sell for 8bht a hand, Papaya, 2.5 bht a kilo, way down on last year, was 6/8bht then, it just seems like our local market is flooded with both, General concensus is more thai farmers can afford irrigation now, consequently prices have dropped..

As for the bananas, i have plenty of plants to experiment on and will try your suggested method, and what ive read on the web, its got to make sense, eg, when you plant cabbage seeds and they grow, you transplant and perhaps leave the strongest one, or they grow too crowded and suffocate eachother..

As for the dieased papaya trees, i decided today to drag all the prunings from the tamarind trees into the field and have several good fires, hopefully this will rid the farm of the desease and provide the ground with some potash ect for the cassava plantation, good idea or not? thanks for any coments everybody,

Lickey.

[rice555]

Hello Lickey, about the sun scald problem, I ran across a artical in House Ag Mag 8/2550 a the grower puts a cloth covering around the fruit, not unlike bagging bananas , mangos and other fruit that can get sun scald. I use cut up shade netting in pieces to cover tomatoes to prevent sun scald. Sorry fore the poor quality of the picture.

rice555

[Lickey]

Thanks Rice555, i should have thought of that, i will bear it in mind in the future, I would think a shaded "peticoat" round the fruit would have protected them from the sun and kept the fruit marketable for a few more days, even though the tops have died off,

Question about bagging the bannanas, some of our bananas have brown "insect looking" marks on them, down to the flesh of the fruit, is this sunburn, and what sort of bags do i need to prevent this? TIA, Lickey.

[Pond Life]

Do these marks look like scratches & punctures with something needle like ?

If so I think its likely to be a fruit bat.

If I leave ripe bananas on the tree to long, the ripest ones get covered in scratches (I think from the bats feet as it clings on) & the ends nibbled off.

[rice555]

Hello Licky, I personally don't know about growing bananas, but looking on the web for irrigation info I ran across this:

Bunch Covering

Covering bunch using dried leaves of the plant is economical and prevents the bunch from direct exposure to sunlight. Bunch cover enhances quality of fruit. But in rainy season this practice should be avoided.

Sleeving of bunch is done to protect fruits against dust, spray residue, insect and birds. For this blue plastic sleeves are preferred. This also increases temperature around developing bunch and helps in early maturity

I found this at http://www.jains.com/ they have a nice site and was able to see bore tube screens and other products not found on other sites. They have a good page on taking care of a drip system, be it tape or dripper.( the T-Tape site has the best system care and info, PDF)

Back to the banana, on the L/H side of Jains web page is a link to "tissue culture", it's was interesting to see what's going on in India.

rice555

[Lickey]

Hi Pondlife, parts of the skin are missing, the actual fruit is ok,b ut this makes them unmarketable, where the skin is missing, the edgges of the remaining skin are brown, and i have seen a lot of birdshit on the plants, white and black stools, perhaps fruitbat, perhaps pigeon??

HI Rice, Thanks for the info and a good website, going to Udon today, will try to find the bags you suggested, Ive spent the last 2 days cutting bamboo and propping up the big plants that are starting to lean over, heavy with bananas, even though there was no real sun today, it was 41c on the farm, enough to make all things wilt i think!!, The 4 10 mtr diameter sprinklers work at night on a timer, so the water does more good on cooler soil, well, thats the theory !! cheers Lickey..