Rubber Trees

[SonnyWaxmo]

Sonny if you google Thailand weather it will give you the Thai government site in English. You can see most of what you want in there, or there is a stcky with link to a weather site in the main farming forum. That should tell you when to expect rain. Wife said she wasn't tapping until we had rain, so I got my red indian kit on yesterday, and danced around the house for an hour. Problem solved.

Thanks for the tip, I have checked it before but I didn't realised all the statistics they have. Interesting reading when no tapping to take care of.

Thanks, Sonny

[BLACKJACK2]

Cobbler

Not sure how much it cost i wasn't there, just left it to my wife but was expensive. Wether it was worth it we will have to wait and see, it was just so disheartening seeing all those dead trees and knowing we had to start again.

We do 35 rai, pump water from the river Kwai Noi through a 6inch pipe 200yards to our land then run the black flexi pipe around the trees.

So cost was 2 water pumps, pipe, electric is about 6000month to run the pumps and 2 people to take care of it all.

[cobbler]

Cobbler

Not sure how much it cost i wasn't there, just left it to my wife but was expensive. Wether it was worth it we will have to wait and see, it was just so disheartening seeing all those dead trees and knowing we had to start again.

We do 35 rai, pump water from the river Kwai Noi through a 6inch pipe 200yards to our land then run the black flexi pipe around the trees.

So cost was 2 water pumps, pipe, electric is about 6000month to run the pumps and 2 people to take care of it all.

Thanks a lot for that.Sounds like you did a great setup. 'Don't be disheartend.It's all about learning.Trial and error.I think for sure your money was well spent.Your nights can get very cool up there ,so with water you should be laughing now.

Did you put sprinklers on to water your trees or just small holes in the pipe?

Edited February 20, 2012 by cobbler

[customcurb]

An rubber trade show?? Sort of, on a few rai of the local govt building with stage and seating for evening band and talks with booths around the prerimeter. About 30 or so booths for rubber assorted interests and a govt sponsored pavilion for promoting the rubber business along with hands on tapping trials. We bought various potions and ya for trees, and a 3 supertabs tapping knives. Took our soon to be student tappers along on the second day and they seemed interested in learning some. Picked up a govt sponsored book and dvd that seems to be totally full info. Unfortunately it's all in Thai so that leaves me out and wife doesn't have the attention span and diligence to sift through all and then translate to me. Sigh.

We await the rubber tappers school in a couple weeks and then getting trees open.

[customcurb]

Another note, visited our 25 rai plot first time in about 3 weeks (not opened yet) and find many hundreds of trees seem to have darker lower branches with few leaves, and some blacked dried lesions on the trunks. Upper branches look fine, plenty of new and existing leaves, tall, and 85% of all are ready to cut when season starts. I was a tad freaked in concern of dying trees. Went to the govt rubber replanting office with some friendly and hopefully knowledgeable people. Following the previously mentioned trade-show one of the govt people is supposed to visit our plot and advise. At the trade show a seemingly knowledgeable, outspoken and very confident rep at one of the booths supposedly pointed the problem as a fungus and recommended a couple of bottles of whatever to be mixed with 200 liters water and sprayed around trees. I bought enough for 6 rai treatment and will be spraying in 1-2 days, says 15-30 days should show noticeable improvement.

I have noticed this condition on quite a few other plantations and plots since I saw on ours, and previously on a friendly falangs plantation a month back. Quite interested in seeing if the treatment works.

[scotbeve]

Here's another foible I just found out this week about rubber plantations.... My SIL has a plot adjacent to a Honey Tangerine orchard. The new(ish) leaves started to dry / curl up for some reason. She is the amphur rubber community manager and asked for a survey to be done in the 2 sub-districts by folks that had similar problems in the past. She was advised to spray a sulfur solution on each entire tree by the rubber org folks. The trees have now rebounded and are looking good. First I've heard of sulphur being used....

[David006]

Amphur rubber community? Wife just went to local amphur/agri office about registering her 30 odd few acres and getting soil tests and subsidized this and that..sound good people although one gov guy told her that a lot of so called gov experts don't know sh..from ..bit of a worry...some locals like your wife seem better informed.....??

[scotbeve]

Amphur rubber community? Wife just went to local amphur/agri office about registering her 30 odd few acres and getting soil tests and subsidized this and that..sound good people although one gov guy told her that a lot of so called gov experts don't know sh..from ..bit of a worry...some locals like your wife seem better informed.....??

Hi David,

Yes, most of the more (newbie) folks that DO know stuff have learned from govt. sponsored southern tappers that are hired freelance by folks around the area. These folks teach everyone interested the whole shebang from germination,/grafting to RSS production and sales (and all subjects in-between). It was well worth for me to pay these guys about 1,000/day as instructors (that includes their food). Each "phase" of rubber production will see these folks come in and instruct the local folks. Oh... there also teaching them about their "rubber" banks (per amphur) - like a rubber credit union.

[wijar]

Hi all. I have been following this forum for a few weeks now and am impressed with the contributions made, be it that I am a novice at any kind of green fingers work, let alone know anything about trees. My wife and i are about to step into the rubber plantation owners world with converting a sugar and Uca farm to a rubber plantation. This year we are planning to convert about 80 rai with a few more rai to come for next year(these are still in Uca, to be cut in the next month or so) We have been to the local government rubber man and he was very pleasant and helpfull. He suggested that he come and have a look at our plot and that we take samples to the testing laboratory in our Amphur, near Phitsanulok. He invited us to join their discussion group and told us that we will learn all there is to know about rubber farming in that group. Herein lies my first question; Should we join the group fist and later go to the 8 day school in Khong Khai or do the school first?

My second question is related to the RRIM3001 trees, so highly spoken off. When we told the government rubber man that we were planning to plant these RRIM3001 trees he told us that it would be risky as these were not tried in Thailand yet, where the soil and weather conditions are different than in Malaysia. Does anyone have experience with or comments on this subject.

My third question is related to the purchase of sticks, we planning to do out own nursery. I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, so am reliant on the reputation of the seller. Can you please advise of sellers with a good reputation. I'd hate to find out in 5 or 6 years that I'd bought some different than planned.

Just a new and very interested and keen new rubber farmer.

[kwonitoy]

How much fire can a rubber tree stand

This a piece of land that ground fire swept through last wed. It didn't look too bad at first, but day by day the leaves are are looking worse. Anyone have any experience?

Land belongs to wifes cousin

Posted with Thaivisa App http://apps.thaivisa.com

[SonnyWaxmo]

How much fire can a rubber tree stand

This a piece of land that ground fire swept through last wed. It didn't look too bad at first, but day by day the leaves are are looking worse. Anyone have any experience?

Land belongs to wifes cousin

Posted with Thaivisa App http://apps.thaivisa.com

Hi I think you don't have to worry to much.

We had a fire passing through our farm in 2010, just before we planned to start our first tapping season. The picture you have uploaded looks about the same as our tree did. Some of our trees where badly burned just up to the crown starts, but most of them had burnmarks about 1m high, mostley on the downwind side.

This is what we did, we delayed the tapping start 1 year, and then we gave som extra fertilizer and looked after theme so no insects start to damage the burned areas. Luckely I must say now 2 years later we didn't loose any tree beacause of the fire, the worst damages you can see is about 30 trees that have deep scares on about 20% of the tree. The most of theme have letter stamps big pieces of old bark coming loose, but fresh and healty bark is now growing again. If we just where lucky? I don't know!

Best Regards

Sonny

[kwonitoy]

How much fire can a rubber tree stand

This a piece of land that ground fire swept through last wed. It didn't look too bad at first, but day by day the leaves are are looking worse. Anyone have any experience?

Land belongs to wifes cousin

Posted with Thaivisa App http://apps.thaivisa.com

Hi I think you don't have to worry to much.

We had a fire passing through our farm in 2010, just before we planned to start our first tapping season. The picture you have uploaded looks about the same as our tree did. Some of our trees where badly burned just up to the crown starts, but most of them had burnmarks about 1m high, mostley on the downwind side.

This is what we did, we delayed the tapping start 1 year, and then we gave som extra fertilizer and looked after theme so no insects start to damage the burned areas. Luckely I must say now 2 years later we didn't loose any tree beacause of the fire, the worst damages you can see is about 30 trees that have deep scares on about 20% of the tree. The most of theme have letter stamps big pieces of old bark coming loose, but fresh and healty bark is now growing again. If we just where lucky? I don't know!

Best Regards

Sonny

Thanks for the information Sonny,

When I first saw the damage I thought it would be no problem, but as the days go on it looks worse.

The trees still show green from about midway in the crown to the tops so I hope they'll be OK. The bark doesn't seem to be damaged, some latex weeping out but no pieces missing yet

.

Right now he's watering the trees day and night and has painted betel paste on the bark. I don't know if this will help or not, can't hurt I suppose.

Opinion around here varies from, no problem, 50% will die, to there all goners. Nobody really knows which is why I asked for first hand information.

This time of year when it gets hot and the winds start blowing there are always runaway fires from burning rice paddies so it's something that will happen again.

This guy kept his trees very clean of grass and weeds, all that burnt were the leaves that had dropped from them. Other than sweeping the leaves up there is nothing more he could have done to keep his land clear.

I have 30 rai about 1km away from this plot and the fire burnt up to the edge of my land and I've got about 30 that got singed so I consider myself lucky.

I'll take some more photos as time goes on to show what happens.

Ken

[David006]

Amphur rubber community? Wife just went to local amphur/agri office about registering her 30 odd few acres and getting soil tests and subsidized this and that..sound good people although one gov guy told her that a lot of so called gov experts don't know sh..from ..bit of a worry...some locals like your wife seem better informed.....??

Hi David,

Yes, most of the more (newbie) folks that DO know stuff have learned from govt. sponsored southern tappers that are hired freelance by folks around the area. These folks teach everyone interested the whole shebang from germination,/grafting to RSS production and sales (and all subjects in-between). It was well worth for me to pay these guys about 1,000/day as instructors (that includes their food). Each "phase" of rubber production will see these folks come in and instruct the local folks. Oh... there also teaching them about their "rubber" banks (per amphur) - like a rubber credit union.

Thanks for that ,amazing what IS available in the way of support for farmers....we only learned about it from a young couple two farms away that are cutting our recently opened trees in addition to their own. They seem to be a wealth of knowledge!

You mention the Rubber Credit Union...wife was telling me about the loans etc for food and chemicals and I decided it was a sort of Credit Union..apparently you invest about say 10k and draw on it..it earns interest at 3% apparently too!

She also learned that gov buyers visit every month and set up something like a cattle market to buy rubber at an agreed futures price..not sure how that all works though...she is going to a newbies meeting next month to get more info.

Frickin hell ...what you don't find out after 5+ years rubber farming eh!

cheers

david

[David006]

How much fire can a rubber tree stand

This a piece of land that ground fire swept through last wed. It didn't look too bad at first, but day by day the leaves are are looking worse. Anyone have any experience?

Land belongs to wifes cousin

Posted with Thaivisa App http://apps.thaivisa.com

Hi I think you don't have to worry to much.

We had a fire passing through our farm in 2010, just before we planned to start our first tapping season. The picture you have uploaded looks about the same as our tree did. Some of our trees where badly burned just up to the crown starts, but most of them had burnmarks about 1m high, mostley on the downwind side.

This is what we did, we delayed the tapping start 1 year, and then we gave som extra fertilizer and looked after theme so no insects start to damage the burned areas. Luckely I must say now 2 years later we didn't loose any tree beacause of the fire, the worst damages you can see is about 30 trees that have deep scares on about 20% of the tree. The most of theme have letter stamps big pieces of old bark coming loose, but fresh and healty bark is now growing again. If we just where lucky? I don't know!

Best Regards

Sonny

Thanks for the information Sonny,

When I first saw the damage I thought it would be no problem, but as the days go on it looks worse.

The trees still show green from about midway in the crown to the tops so I hope they'll be OK. The bark doesn't seem to be damaged, some latex weeping out but no pieces missing yet

.

Right now he's watering the trees day and night and has painted betel paste on the bark. I don't know if this will help or not, can't hurt I suppose.

Opinion around here varies from, no problem, 50% will die, to there all goners. Nobody really knows which is why I asked for first hand information.

This time of year when it gets hot and the winds start blowing there are always runaway fires from burning rice paddies so it's something that will happen again.

This guy kept his trees very clean of grass and weeds, all that burnt were the leaves that had dropped from them. Other than sweeping the leaves up there is nothing more he could have done to keep his land clear.

I have 30 rai about 1km away from this plot and the fire burnt up to the edge of my land and I've got about 30 that got singed so I consider myself lucky.

I'll take some more photos as time goes on to show what happens.

Ken

You guys are making me paranoid about all the dried dead grass we have under our newly tapped trees.

It was sprayed two days before the frickin rain stopped. Had some rain last night which seems to have laid it down a bit .

Jumping out of bed every time I get a whiff of anything burning. They are burning cut rubber tree stumps or something a few ks away too..very nerve wracking...

[Mosha]

You appear to be luckier than us Ken. Our neighbour burn't right up to their boundary with us and beyond. Our trees were not even 1 year old, and we lost about 100 trees. To make matters worse, Sopha's brother in law was the Kamnam, and he took a bribe to do nothing, when my wife went to see him. He had to give that back when Sopha went to the police. Karma is a bitch though. They stored 750 trees on our land for planting without asking. We knew who the trees belonged to, but we ignored them. They got stolen, the Burma heard a truck pull up one night. The owner came to see Sopha asking about them. Sopha just said what trees?

[timber]

Well Steve are rubber trees are dead

[Mosha]

Well Steve are rubber trees are dead

I'll pop over next week, I'll telephone 1st though.

[kwonitoy]

Well the day after the fire I went with one of my guys and cut grass in the neighbor's ajoining rice paddies. The rice farmers don't care about the grass so they got some free cutting by me.

Did it Thai style, didn't ask, don't care.

I'm always paranoid this time of year, we've had fires sweep through every year. The fence line on my one 30 rai plot is nothing but burnt stumps after repeated fires. Time to replace with concrete posts later on.

There are the fire trucks in the villages, every village has at least one, ours has a couple. BUT they will not go anywhere there isn't a proper road. Just sit on the road and spray into the fields as far as the pump will spray and that's it. When it's 38 C above and a wind blowing the fire's move very very fast.

What scares me is the leaves that fall and collect under the trees, they burn like gasoline. Even if your standing on site there isn't much you can do.

Anybody see anything like a hay rake that could be pulled behind a tractor to gather up the leaves in a safe place for disposal? The fires aren't going to go away so its time to think about how to get rid of the fuel

Ken

[SonnyWaxmo]

Fire in the rubber farm!

As I earlier said we had a fire passing through our farm 2 years ago. And a friend just a few 100 meters from us had a fire passing through just a few days ago. I show you some pictures and tell you what we did.

This is what caused the fire, the neighbur burned his suguar, and didn't care about his neighbors.

As a result the fire rapidly spread into the rubber farm.

Some trees was burned all the way up to the crown, but bost of them had burnmarks about 1m high.

We "painted" the trees with a calsium - magnesium mix, the thais call it Pohn Kao. The white color should give some more sun reflection, and keep the tree a litle bit cooler. It should also keep some insects away.

The result two years later was small pieces like letter stamps, and new fresh bark under it.

I totaly agree with you that the only way to protect the farm is to try and keep it clean from old leafs and other things.

Best regards

Sonny

[kwonitoy]

Thanks for the pictures Sonny, it adds to the body of knowledge on the forum.

Good to know that some fire isn't terminal to the trees.

Bad thing is the 35 rai I planted last year now has a fresh planting of sugarcane next door

[AA1]

I was most interested to read and distressed to read about the the fires some of you have experienced from OUTSIDE as I have worried about accidental fires. We have rubber trees being grown on 3 sides of ours and a dirt road on the 4th. so no sugar (or rice) burning worries.

We are going to tap one half of our trees this year (the rest are 2 years younger). I was delighted that my wife, against locals (& family) advise, has held off tapping till later this year when the vast majority of the trees will be 50 cms or over. Around here many farmers cut too small but need the cash.

Some of the new leaves were beginning to get whitish spots (what she calls 'bacteria') so, about 2 days after some rain, power sprayed all the young leaves with powder solution got from our local rubber shop.

Having a good canopy, we had a large leaf fall well covering the ground (which was basically weed free). The wife then said she was going to burn them!! Needless to say I nearly had a fit but she's the boss (if one wants peace!). She got a team in who brushed all the leaves into a 2 metre strip between each of the rows of trees. With fire breaks both ends of the strips, she proceeded to light them. Still being very slightly damp from the rain a few days earlier they slowly burnt along with the flame not more than 1 foot high and away from the trees.

NO damage caused to the trees.

NO risk of accidental fires now.

She says that it will help kill the 'bacteria' as well as giving the red ants a coughing time!

Driving round I have never come across this controlled burning before in a rubber farm.

Has anyone else?

and

any thoughts on the pros & cons?

Thanks.

[customcurb]

Anyone have a lead on where I can buy ammonia in Issan as will need in processing?

[Mosha]

Try one of your local hardware stires, down here they stock all sorts of stuff. Not just building materials.

[customcurb]

Mosha,

there are numerous 'rubber supply shops' that sell knives, acids, etc etc etc and three of them gave me the crazy falang look when I asked for ammonia - I expected this. Google translate says Ammonia translates to Ammonia (with a slight accent) so I will persevere. Odd that Lotus doesn't have it either, or maybe not so odd.

[Mosha]

Try one of your local hardware stires, down here they stock all sorts of stuff. Not just building materials.

Note to self don't type and drink (stires). We buy the chemical to produce sheets from a builder's merchant.

[customcurb]

As I'd mentioned before, was at a small rubber trade show recently and came home with many samples of fertilizer and sprays. I did see what looked like very large spray cans but with what looked like little metal cubes on the on the end of a small hose attached to the spray can. I figured it was some sort of tree stimulant (which I'm not leaning towards) and didn't bother asking about it.

Two days later my friend said he thought it was an airless continual tapping rig which would drip into a bladder bag until it was removed. Said the tree cut would be rather short and small (like 5 or so centimeters long) but with no air contract to the latex at the cut, it should drip into the collection bag (also sealed) for days and days.

That sounded like an interesting idea to look at, if it was so, but I don't know any more about it as I didn't get literature (all in Thai anyways).

Anyone heard of such a setup ?

[Mosha]

A few years ago a local was tapping into plastic bags. That may have been a similar set up. However he's not doing it now, he's making Kee Yang and turn that into sheets. Or that's what it looks like he's doing.

[scotbeve]

As I'd mentioned before, was at a small rubber trade show recently and came home with many samples of fertilizer and sprays. I did see what looked like very large spray cans but with what looked like little metal cubes on the on the end of a small hose attached to the spray can. I figured it was some sort of tree stimulant (which I'm not leaning towards) and didn't bother asking about it.

Two days later my friend said he thought it was an airless continual tapping rig which would drip into a bladder bag until it was removed. Said the tree cut would be rather short and small (like 5 or so centimeters long) but with no air contract to the latex at the cut, it should drip into the collection bag (also sealed) for days and days.

That sounded like an interesting idea to look at, if it was so, but I don't know any more about it as I didn't get literature (all in Thai anyways).

Anyone heard of such a setup ?

I saw only a picture (image) of the bladder-type tapping on google. I searched through many pages to find it. Sorry, I don't remember if I had saved any text.

[customcurb]

google isn't much use for all things rubber, and some of the finds are all in thai anyways. Will continue to search and ask. The interest is in followup to an observant friend not in the rubber business, who believes that with the million+ new trees coming on line for each the next few years and the million+ babies that will be planted soon - the short of it is he believes there will be a significant shortage of tappers (let alone ones that aren't just wood carvers) in the coming years. Labor demand may force costs up and quality may suffer. A product that reduces the 'touch time/labor cost' seems to make sense if there's no or little loss of output. Will report in if and and what I may find.

[scotbeve]

google isn't much use for all things rubber, and some of the finds are all in thai anyways. Will continue to search and ask. The interest is in followup to an observant friend not in the rubber business, who believes that with the million+ new trees coming on line for each the next few years and the million+ babies that will be planted soon - the short of it is he believes there will be a significant shortage of tappers (let alone ones that aren't just wood carvers) in the coming years. Labor demand may force costs up and quality may suffer. A product that reduces the 'touch time/labor cost' seems to make sense if there's no or little loss of output. Will report in if and and what I may find.

Custom,

There is a number of papers written on rubber but I haven't digested them all yet. A very good point about labor.... for the folks already tapping and new tappers; this is a worry. I have my wife's brother in a 50/50 profit sharing deal. He's the manager and has taken care of the trees without fail. For those of you who understand how to manage Thais working should do well, for those of you who may have a "small glitch" now and again with working relations - try to "tweak" your style. Loyal crews will stay with you. The labor cost may have to be raised a bit before the crunch comes as well.

Thanks for your time and efforts for further researching customcurb - I think there's a few more of us that are interested in what appears to be a cure for labor shortages/quality of latex.