Rubber Trees

[jamescollister]

As I sit on my stilt porch, cold beer in hand after a hard day watering my coconuts. The house is full of talking, a girl, baby and her mother ride up, not the husband, they are here to interview the wife and MIL to see if they will consent to work for us as tappers. They are Rayony tappers and are back to harvest their family rice.

Seems to me as I remember when I went for a job, it was the employer who did the interview, not here. Are we fit people to work for, if Thailand is in such bad shape someone should tell these people a job is a job. Can imagine going back to OZ and applying for a job and telling the employer why should I work for you.

Think I will just sit here with my beer and wait for the possible new tapping family to decide whether we are fit employers or not. Jim

[jamescollister]

Food was eaten, much chatter went on, FIL came home saw a gaggle of women and kids eating on the floor. Grabbed his rifle, hammock and back pack, then set off for a night in the jungle.

Asked the wife after the people went, yes or no. They have to go home and discuss it with the rest off their family, it's a family decision. No wonder I drink and have no hair. Jim

[Mosha]

I was going to type a longer pessimistic view of rubber pricing going forward but depressed myself doing so, therefore I'll opine that it's got a lot farther to go down.

Hey it didn't have anything to do with the fact that nearly every country in the world has oil and maybe oil will drop to $50 per barrel in the next 5 years.Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that Thai now owes IMF 800billion baht and no way to pay it back.Many things could happen.Next 3 or so years won't be bright.So think carefully and try to plan ahead.Did that chear you up at all.? Oh I forgot to mention,later this year southern Thai will sink into the ocean.Sorry Mosha,it's shit news for you but great for me.Why?because I'll be sitting on beachfrony property worth billions Oh goody

Well if it's less than 100' I can buy a beachcaster.

[Mosha]

Food was eaten, much chatter went on, FIL came home saw a gaggle of women and kids eating on the floor. Grabbed his rifle, hammock and back pack, then set off for a night in the jungle.

Asked the wife after the people went, yes or no. They have to go home and discuss it with the rest off their family, it's a family decision. No wonder I drink and have no hair. Jim

Are we related??? 555

[jamescollister]

Positive China data, Tocom Rubber may move up

TOKYO: TOCOM rubber futures edged up on Friday, finding support after falling to an almost 2-month low as U.S. fiscal worries raised demand concerns. Positive signals from Friday’s China data is expected to help the futures to move up further.

The most-active rubber futures contract for April delivery on the Tokyo Commodity Exchange (TOCOM) was up 3.4 yen at 246.7 yen per kg as of 15.37JST.

The benchmark contract has fallen 4.5 percent so far this week. The contract had fallen as far as 242 yen, the lowest intraday since September 14, during Thursday’s night session, which is a part of Friday’s regular session.

China’s annual consumer inflation eased to its slowest pace in nearly three years in October. Factory output rose 9.6%, while retail sales jumped 14.5%, indicating that domestic demand is holding up according to the official data released on Friday (November 9, 2012).

Newly re-elected U.S. President Barack Obama will make a statement on the economy on Friday, the White House said, setting the stage for a showdown with congressional Republicans over contentious tax and spending issues.

The dollar fetched 79.48 yen on Friday, having fallen to 79.32 yen on Thursday, its lowest in more than a week as financial markets turned risk-averse.

Rubber Country Source : Rubber Country

[cobbler]

I was going to type a longer pessimistic view of rubber pricing going forward but depressed myself doing so, therefore I'll opine that it's got a lot farther to go down.

Hey it didn't have anything to do with the fact that nearly every country in the world has oil and maybe oil will drop to $50 per barrel in the next 5 years.Or maybe it had something to do with the fact that Thai now owes IMF 800billion baht and no way to pay it back.Many things could happen.Next 3 or so years won't be bright.So think carefully and try to plan ahead.Did that chear you up at all.? Oh I forgot to mention,later this year southern Thai will sink into the ocean.Sorry Mosha,it's shit news for you but great for me.Why?because I'll be sitting on beachfrony property worth billions Oh goody

Well if it's less than 100' I can buy a beachcaster.

Mate I'll give you 1.For a small monthly fee of 1 box of LEO but you have to help me drink it

[cobbler]

Yesterdays price was 74 baht per kilo for mats

If I had a brain,I'd sell everything and go back to oz with the money.Buy an appartment on the gold Coast and a Thai restaurant and let my money make reall money.Not this shit.Unfortunately I'm a moron

[thaiguzzi]

Glenn,

we are interested in the E10. I do'nt suppose it has reg documents and a number plate? If not, how's 50-55k sound? Bell me asap and let me know, and we'll zoom up to have a look this week, with cash in our hands. tel 08-10574693.

Regards,

Mike.

[jamescollister]

Gentlemen of the rubber forum, I need your help. After the rolling machine saga, which I think I posted about earlier and posted in the Issan forum about Thais and machines. I think I have been adopting a Thia mentality, live in the moment, no problem, Buddha will take care, but there is a problem, low rubber prices.

The rolling machine thing has shown me that I have been getting slack, if you don't do it yourself no one will. Pulled the machine apart , greased and adjusted it all to specs, will try it tomorrow.

So here is the question, am I following best practice or not, are others doing thing differently or have better ways of doing things.

These question are for sheet makers.

1/ How do you mix your latex for making sheet, water to latex ratio. Mixing tin size.

Has anyone tried these concrete boxes where you mix the latex and insert panels to make small sheets

2/ What type of congealing agent do you use, IE formic acid or a power type and at what strength.

3/ How long do you let the mix sit before putting in into the kneading [ flattening machine ]

4/ Do you hang the sheet or pile it with plastic between sheets and how long do you leave it before putting the sheet through the rolling machine or machines.

5/ Do you do sun dried, RSS or hot air dried and what is the difference in price. Are you getting X Baht less for sun dried than hot air dried and or RSS.

6/ How long is the smoking process taking or hot air dried taking.

7/ Do you use anti fungal power or talcum powder when stacking the finished sheet [stops sticking to and stops fungi growing. ]

As said after the rolling machine cock up and the failed hot air drying attempt, it seems I need to go back and look at the whole process. Low prices mean less money, rubber is my only income and getting a few Baht more or a better grade is the difference between sticky rice and frogs, Lao Kow or beer and pizza. This month we will produce near on 4,000 kilos of dry rubber, those few baht here and there add up.

Thanks for any replies in advance, all advice is welcome. May not be able to reply, as have been told the power goes off at midnight for 2 days. The big box on the main road 7 km away is being changed. Take this to mean a bigger transformer is going in. Jim

.

[Mosha]

Yesterdays price was 74 baht per kilo for mats

If I had a brain,I'd sell everything and go back to oz with the money.Buy an appartment on the gold Coast and a Thai restaurant and let my money make reall money.Not this shit.Unfortunately I'm a moron

We got 74 too, which was a whopping 1 baht up on last week.

[Mosha]

@ Jim. I've never watched the process Jim. However from what I know or guess.

Tins are approx 18"x12"x3"

Prior to final rolling the pancakes are laid out in a pile separated by sacking. He uses Nam Som in the mix.

We only sell Kee Yang and USS, no anti fungal, we don't store long term.

I don't think I've ever seen the boxes you mention for making sheets

[David006]

@ Jim. I've never watched the process Jim. However from what I know or guess.

Tins are approx 18"x12"x3"

Prior to final rolling the pancakes are laid out in a pile separated by sacking. He uses Nam Som in the mix.

We only sell Kee Yang and USS, no anti fungal, we don't store long term.

I don't think I've ever seen the boxes you mention for making sheets

5555 you guys certainly have and need your sense of humour ..thanks for the laughs and tears ...lol

As you probably know we have a few thousand trees and have considered sheet on an annual basis..building the shed getting the rollers etc etc...but being/becoming Thai-ified or troppo ie alcoholic, procrastinating,apathetic, lazy etc etc.

I am beginning to think that that we have lost relatively little with staying with cup. Okay, some losses through theft over the years but seems to me , my sanity ,for what it is, has been saved to some degree ......reading your stories.....lol

BTW Jim whre did ya plant them coconuts? between your trees or? What type ie the shorter 6 year fruiters or the regulars?

Think I mentioned before we planted maybe 30 over the years..many rotted or got eaten...the ones in the better bottom land soil are way behind the ones planted in the the sandstone rocky soil. Ron the better ones will benefit and maybe fruit with the addition of my ashes. On the other hand we have probably 50 banna trees which if I was to bother may well provide some extra income..we end up feeding the birds or giving away most of the abundant fruit...the stems of fruited plants make great fertiliser methinks.

off topic....

Was reading up about a co in Adelaide that is making fiberboard/paper or ..in QLD from stems..judging by the share price don't seem to be taking off though.

Seems to me for young guys like yourself and others could be worth looking into ....abundant stems in LOS methinks even from monkey ( wild) banana trees. No idea what the equipment/processing costs would be but does not need any water in process it seems.

www.papyrusaustralia.com.au

[cobbler]

Jim,

We use 4 Lt of liquid yang mix with 2Lt of water,Acid is about 50 Ml.Mixed slowly so not too many bubbles.Bubbles in the mats are not good .Shop will see it and think you are trying to do tricks to make more money

We make mats in batches of 20,.By the time tin number 20 is done tin number 1 is ready to tip out and flatten out using a pipe.Size when finished flattening is about Same size as a 25 kilo pui bag.Then rest of the yang is mixed and poured into tins.Then made into pancakes.When this is finished .worker proceeds to make mats using the rollers.Important is to make mats as thin as possible as this will allow them to dry better and quicker.Also store longer.If mix is wrong mats will be sticky and stick to rollers and tear apart.Workers may not want to use your flash rollers because not know or feel comfortable to do so.

The acid mix depends on yang content to moisture content.Also if lots of moisture in the ground yang content will be less,Especially in trees under the age of 10 years even 15 years of age.

This is a trade like any other trade ,it takes time to learn.This is why changing workers all the time is not good(if no choice nothing you can do though)Worker may have come from farm with different moisture content , so mix will be slightly different.Try to be patient and wait a bit for a week or so for worker to become accustom to your trees

Different workers prefer to use different acid brands.Depends what they are accustomed to using .We buy whatever acid the worker wants.

So as you can gather from this ,these amounts I give you are a guideline only..

Hope this is of some assistance to you.If not come down here and drink beer with me and watch southern Thailand sink into the ocean.Mosha will already be here sitting on his deck chair.Will have icey beer in hand and fishing rod in other.

[Mosha]

Bit early for the beer 555

[kolohe]

Bit early for the beer 555

How about for scotch?

[Mosha]

Beer time

[glennb6]

James,

many months back we watched the thai workers of a previously neighboring falang make mat a few times. trees were 12-13 or so yrs old, they collected 3x60ltr blue barrels of man-yang. 1.they seived 30L into an empty barrel. 2. mixed 30L water with acid (and I don't recall which brand nor how much) plus a bit of yellow dye in an empty. 3. poured 30L water+acid into barrel with 30L nam-yang and stirred vigorously with a wooden stick. That's 60L of 1:1 mix ratio which they promptly poured into 10 tins. That's 6L per tin (which were quite full) and skimmed the foam. Tins sat aprox 30 minutes before running through kneeder and layed in stack waiting. Then run through single pair smooth roller (electric) 3 times and then run through a second ribbed roller machine, then hung on bamboo poles to airdry for a day or two. then they were moved into their tin and uka made large smoke shed.

I microwaved a couple samples of their fresh nam-yang and it was 39% drc net weight. they made nice looking mat and it was his exclusive product. YMMV and that's all I know.

[jamescollister]

Jim,

We use 4 Lt of liquid yang mix with 2Lt of water,Acid is about 50 Ml.Mixed slowly so not too many bubbles.Bubbles in the mats are not good .Shop will see it and think you are trying to do tricks to make more money

We make mats in batches of 20,.By the time tin number 20 is done tin number 1 is ready to tip out and flatten out using a pipe.Size when finished flattening is about Same size as a 25 kilo pui bag.Then rest of the yang is mixed and poured into tins.Then made into pancakes.When this is finished .worker proceeds to make mats using the rollers.Important is to make mats as thin as possible as this will allow them to dry better and quicker.Also store longer.If mix is wrong mats will be sticky and stick to rollers and tear apart.Workers may not want to use your flash rollers because not know or feel comfortable to do so.

The acid mix depends on yang content to moisture content.Also if lots of moisture in the ground yang content will be less,Especially in trees under the age of 10 years even 15 years of age.

This is a trade like any other trade ,it takes time to learn.This is why changing workers all the time is not good(if no choice nothing you can do though)Worker may have come from farm with different moisture content , so mix will be slightly different.Try to be patient and wait a bit for a week or so for worker to become accustom to your trees

Different workers prefer to use different acid brands.Depends what they are accustomed to using .We buy whatever acid the worker wants.

So as you can gather from this ,these amounts I give you are a guideline only..

Hope this is of some assistance to you.If not come down here and drink beer with me and watch southern Thailand sink into the ocean.Mosha will already be here sitting on his deck chair.Will have icey beer in hand and fishing rod in other.

Thanks for the reply Cobbler, sounds very similar to how we do things. This acid thing gets me though, my tappers mix their own yet I have tested DRC of our latex and all the plantations come in the same plus or minus a few percent at any given time in the season, yet all mix at different strengths. I wanted to just mix a barrel load much weaker than they use, mutiny was in the air.

Remember reading some where that the bigger companies leave the tins to sit for 2 hours and after speaking to the rolling machine manufacturer [ the owner ] He said after kneading leave the sheets stacked for at least 20 minutes before rolling. Wife took this to mean, allowing the sheets to dry a bit, but I took it to mean that allowing the sheets to sit allows the polymers to bond , thus making better sheet.

Tappers want to go to sleep so try and speed things up, stronger acid to congeal faster, this then lowers the standard of sheet. we make. When we first opened the factory we were buying latex only, our trees had not yet started. The guy who we hired to make the sheet knew his stuff. The rubber was so good that buyers would come up from the south to buy at 3 or more Baht above the local price. That guy is long gone and I wish I had taken more notice of what and how he did it.

On the machine front, they all know how to use it, rubber in one end, sheet out the other. Problem is that they didn't know how to set the spacing, but would not admit they didn't know, to top it off the machine has a constant water flow lubricating the rubber and rollers. Now after pulling the machine apart, oiling and greasing everything and setting the roller spacing to the correct specs. I switched it on, very little water was flowing, the tappers were getting wet from the spray from the tap. Instead of asking me for 50 Baht for a new tap, they stuck plastic into the tap to drop the water pressure.

As the money kept coming I got slacker, spending more time watching for theft and taking no notice of the processing. It now appears that since the good sheet maker went the machine has never been set, they just played around with the levers until a 1/2 decent sheet came out, with only around 20% of the water flow required. It's a wonder we were getting grade 3 sheet at all.

As we are going through tappers faster than I can count, I have given up on trying to keep them happy, if they won't stay when I try to be good to them I am just going to keep firing them. Hired 4 more a few days ago and will lose the BIL at the end of the month. He was a good worker, but seems to have lost interest as the price dropped. Told the wife if he goes there will be no job waiting when/if he comes back. Seems to think he will make more money working for his wife's family doing palm oil.

Glenn. interesting what you say, never head of it being done that way, but have often thought that mixing individual tins was a waste of time. Question, are you sure these tins are 6 liter, round here they are 5 liter never seen 6 liter mixing trays. Bigger is better for me as we have a big rolling machine. Do you know what grade rubber he was getting, think could replace the wooden stirring stick with a large electric paint mixer. Any pics of the operation.

On another subject, went and sold 800 kilos of the failed hot air dried sheet [government buyers ] no sellers there, so wife and I had a long talk with one of the bosses. Too cut a long story short, he said if we pay him he will come to the factory and grade all our rubber a day or 2 before the buy. Meaning we will get paid the best price, no standing around and arguing about whether the rubber is good or bad. He also explained that out here sheet is bought in only 3 grades, 3, 4, and 5, makes no difference if it is RSS, hot air dried or for that matter sun dried.

The failed hot air dryer, again was my fault, the tappers said they knew how to build it, they clearly did not. It never got up to the 65 degrees needed. I will be doing a tour of some hot air sheds that work and will design at build it myself, if you don't do it your self it never gets done. Won't be laying the brinks etc, but will hire people who can, that way at least it will be built right. Jim

[kwonitoy]

Yesterday's sale price for wet cup, 41.4 Baht/kilo. Auction at a village about 35 kms east of Ban Dung.

Production UP , price down . Oh well keep on cutting, at least this year I'll pay for my fertilizer bill and more.

Ken

[glennb6]

James,

most certain the tins are 6 liter, and they filled to the brim. BTW the slowest part of their mat operation aside from running a single pair rolling machine was the skimming of suds off of each individual tin. Also at the ratanawapi rubber school I had seen a large coagulation trough with the drop in divider panels. The spacers were quite narrow so it appeared the coagulated pieces could go straight to the 5 pair roller machine without first a kneading machine. Didn't see in operation so no idea how well or not it worked.

Kee at local auction 41.5b/kg yesterday.

[gregj69]

Jim,

We use 4 Lt of liquid yang mix with 2Lt of water,Acid is about 50 Ml.Mixed slowly so not too many bubbles.Bubbles in the mats are not good .Shop will see it and think you are trying to do tricks to make more money

We make mats in batches of 20,.By the time tin number 20 is done tin number 1 is ready to tip out and flatten out using a pipe.Size when finished flattening is about Same size as a 25 kilo pui bag.Then rest of the yang is mixed and poured into tins.Then made into pancakes.When this is finished .worker proceeds to make mats using the rollers.Important is to make mats as thin as possible as this will allow them to dry better and quicker.Also store longer.If mix is wrong mats will be sticky and stick to rollers and tear apart.Workers may not want to use your flash rollers because not know or feel comfortable to do so.

The acid mix depends on yang content to moisture content.Also if lots of moisture in the ground yang content will be less,Especially in trees under the age of 10 years even 15 years of age.

This is a trade like any other trade ,it takes time to learn.This is why changing workers all the time is not good(if no choice nothing you can do though)Worker may have come from farm with different moisture content , so mix will be slightly different.Try to be patient and wait a bit for a week or so for worker to become accustom to your trees

Different workers prefer to use different acid brands.Depends what they are accustomed to using .We buy whatever acid the worker wants.

So as you can gather from this ,these amounts I give you are a guideline only..

Hope this is of some assistance to you.If not come down here and drink beer with me and watch southern Thailand sink into the ocean.Mosha will already be here sitting on his deck chair.Will have icey beer in hand and fishing rod in other.

Thanks for the reply Cobbler, sounds very similar to how we do things. This acid thing gets me though, my tappers mix their own yet I have tested DRC of our latex and all the plantations come in the same plus or minus a few percent at any given time in the season, yet all mix at different strengths. I wanted to just mix a barrel load much weaker than they use, mutiny was in the air.

Remember reading some where that the bigger companies leave the tins to sit for 2 hours and after speaking to the rolling machine manufacturer [ the owner ] He said after kneading leave the sheets stacked for at least 20 minutes before rolling. Wife took this to mean, allowing the sheets to dry a bit, but I took it to mean that allowing the sheets to sit allows the polymers to bond , thus making better sheet.

Tappers want to go to sleep so try and speed things up, stronger acid to congeal faster, this then lowers the standard of sheet. we make. When we first opened the factory we were buying latex only, our trees had not yet started. The guy who we hired to make the sheet knew his stuff. The rubber was so good that buyers would come up from the south to buy at 3 or more Baht above the local price. That guy is long gone and I wish I had taken more notice of what and how he did it.

On the machine front, they all know how to use it, rubber in one end, sheet out the other. Problem is that they didn't know how to set the spacing, but would not admit they didn't know, to top it off the machine has a constant water flow lubricating the rubber and rollers. Now after pulling the machine apart, oiling and greasing everything and setting the roller spacing to the correct specs. I switched it on, very little water was flowing, the tappers were getting wet from the spray from the tap. Instead of asking me for 50 Baht for a new tap, they stuck plastic into the tap to drop the water pressure.

As the money kept coming I got slacker, spending more time watching for theft and taking no notice of the processing. It now appears that since the good sheet maker went the machine has never been set, they just played around with the levers until a 1/2 decent sheet came out, with only around 20% of the water flow required. It's a wonder we were getting grade 3 sheet at all.

As we are going through tappers faster than I can count, I have given up on trying to keep them happy, if they won't stay when I try to be good to them I am just going to keep firing them. Hired 4 more a few days ago and will lose the BIL at the end of the month. He was a good worker, but seems to have lost interest as the price dropped. Told the wife if he goes there will be no job waiting when/if he comes back. Seems to think he will make more money working for his wife's family doing palm oil.

Glenn. interesting what you say, never head of it being done that way, but have often thought that mixing individual tins was a waste of time. Question, are you sure these tins are 6 liter, round here they are 5 liter never seen 6 liter mixing trays. Bigger is better for me as we have a big rolling machine. Do you know what grade rubber he was getting, think could replace the wooden stirring stick with a large electric paint mixer. Any pics of the operation.

On another subject, went and sold 800 kilos of the failed hot air dried sheet [government buyers ] no sellers there, so wife and I had a long talk with one of the bosses. Too cut a long story short, he said if we pay him he will come to the factory and grade all our rubber a day or 2 before the buy. Meaning we will get paid the best price, no standing around and arguing about whether the rubber is good or bad. He also explained that out here sheet is bought in only 3 grades, 3, 4, and 5, makes no difference if it is RSS, hot air dried or for that matter sun dried.

The failed hot air dryer, again was my fault, the tappers said they knew how to build it, they clearly did not. It never got up to the 65 degrees needed. I will be doing a tour of some hot air sheds that work and will design at build it myself, if you don't do it your self it never gets done. Won't be laying the brinks etc, but will hire people who can, that way at least it will be built right. Jim

Jim. Here are a couple of shots of a dry air dryer that was working well sth of Surin. Same basic design as your but has solid walls, clear roof to catch the sun and they store the sheet in the same shed.

Greg

Edited November 16, 2012 by gregj69

[cobbler]

Jim ;I'd be carefull using a paint mixer to mix your yang water and acid together as you will get a lot of froth.When they skim it off the top ,that is all lost proffet.As you will get a lesser price for the froth at time of sale.Even though I have told our workers why it's not good to mix the yang water and acid together by hand ,.because I feel sorry for there health.They always seem to do it that way and get very little froth.

Also all the tins in this area are 6 liter tins.I think it wont mater what size they are though as long as the sheets are thin so they dry properly.

Very interesting to read your process .The 20 minute idea for resting your mats before runnung them through the rollers works out to what our workers do but I was unaware of why.Good thing I just sit and smile,and watch

Edited November 16, 2012 by cobbler

[thaiguzzi]

Going up again...

43.5 baht per kilo, wet cup/kee yang at auction yesterday, Udon province. Best production/weight we've ever done too.

Glenn, nice meeting you the other day, the E10 got back no problems and has a new home. Used it yesterday for it's first delivery. Service today and tomorrow.

Regards,

Mike.

[Mosha]

USS yesterday was 76.5

[cobbler]

USS yesterday was 76.5

Meun gun Wan nee 77 baht

Gov has signed agreement with china for another 3 years for 100 baht per kilo Oh goody

Edited November 20, 2012 by cobbler

[glennb6]

Mike,

great to see you in person the other day and I'm glad to hear the wondertruck is doing well. cross everything you can that yang continues upward.

[Mosha]

USS yesterday was 76.5

Marvelous, just bloody marvelous.

[scotbeve]

USS yesterday was 76.5

Marvelous, just bloody marvelous.

Hi folks,

I know I do not post very often but at times like these I must. I mentioned a while back (can't find the post in THIS thread... cobwebs in the brain...) that rubber, like other commodities in Thailand has fluctuated and will continue to fluctuate. You have to be prepared for the good and the bad times. If you're not in the 1% range, then you're not in the know.... Just in the dark like a mushroom and fed (usually) sh_t. UPDATE on our farms>>>> still getting rain every other day!!!! Great for the trees and scenery but not the cup lump tables!!!

[Mosha]

Well if global markets rise. We are hobbled by that 3 year deal are we not?

[rubberpatch]

Hi All

I was hoping for some input on fertilizer (pui) for rubber trees. However I might just add here where we are at on this topic. Unlike most other posts, I live near Trat - it rains here 360 days a year, drips of the trees for the other 5 days so we don’t have too much dry time to contend with as do you other guys up North.

The dirt is very leached out and requires fertilizer to pump up production - soil test 3.5 so farily alkaline as expected with this much rain.

I have 100 rai in trees, 20 rai being cut for first time last season of the RIMM 600 variety. I am selling as Kee Yang or cup rubber at the moment till production comes along in the next coupla years.

The rest of the land I have planted in varying stages using RIMM 235 and RIMM 251 over the last 4 years with pineapple planted in between for a cash crop.

This provides multiple functions of when the pineapple gets pui so do the trees, the weeds must be kept to a minimum but caution required on spraying weeds when trees small, I put plastic bags over them during this operation. Try to keep to a minimum all spraying, it's costly and I am concerned for the environment - pull or slash if at all possible but the weed growth rate here is spectacular and can return to jungle in as little as 8 to 10 weeks not allowing you to walk through without a bush knife.

It's so bad that If I spit on the ground and don’t step back the weeds will grow between my toes by the time you read this.

I use Parraforte at prescribed rate of 1lt to 200lt drum for good results using the weather/growth rate/chemical rate/ to optimize results - more on this later if/for those who want to know.

The pui that was shown to me yesterday by a friend - a product from company - Chareon Inceephan - it's an organic matter 6-3-3 +10 0.M consisting of - N 6% - P2O5 3% - K2O 3%, other detail - 0-2921 8090 3 - in town Gum Pang Pet. Application of 25kg bag to 9 trees approx or approx 55thb per tree.

Q - Has anybody have any experience of the above product?

I read with interest on pui from "thaiguzzi, on 2012-01-20 11:15:16", thanks for that Mike

I have just completed fertilizing the 20 Rai with 12-9-21 +TE, the usual for this area. As it's a first cut I am unable to quantify results till the history comes in however my Ace cutter say's a 50% to 70% increase can be expected. ??? Seem a little too good to be true but we'll see I guess.

Jim - Lickey and others too many too mention, thanks for the supportive info - keep it coming.

Thanks to all so far - from Rubberpatch