Fruit Trees For Fun...

[buddhafly]

i've finally got some land and want to plant a few mango, papaya, banana trees for my own consumption....

any experience with, which is easiest, and if much maintenance needs to be done? or can i just plant em and wait for the fruit?

[Maizefarmer]

i've finally got some land and want to plant a few mango, papaya, banana trees for my own consumption....

any experience with, which is easiest, and if much maintenance needs to be done? or can i just plant em and wait for the fruit?

If its only a couple rai and a non-commercial exercise- go for it, take the advise of locals who grow around you, keep your inputs low, keep it simple and above all enjoy it - in Thailands climate, just about anything will flower and produce fruit with little input.

Don't worry about the odd bug - its quite natural to have leaves chomped by all sorts of creepy crawlies, and then they move on to the neighbours yard.....

[buddhafly]

right on.

are there any ways of keeping bugs away without chemeicals?

[Maizefarmer]

right on.

are there any ways of keeping bugs away without chemeicals?

Depends what the bug is and there are a huge range in Thailand - there are all sorts of non-chemical methods, but I am not a organic farmer so I am not your man - but whatever you do - keep it simple. Speak to Chownah - he's your organic buff.

[chownah]

We live in the north and grow mangos, papayas, and bananas. By far the easiest is bananas.

A banana plant consists of a large crown at ground level or just below which sends stalks up. Each stalk will make one flower and then from it one bunch of bananas. When the bananas are mature enough to pick you cut down the stalk and cut off the bunch. There will already be several other stalks growing and the biggest one will produce the next flower and fruit.

To propogate, just cut off the little stalks and put them into a hole in the ground....its that easy. When a stalk is about one metre tall is an easy size to use...but I've used shoots that were 20 cm tall and up to about two metres. When you remove the shoots from the crown try to make a clean cut and get as much of the base of the shoot as possible....but don't worry about it because even with less than half of the base the shoot will do just fine.

You can just dig a hole and put the shoot in...you can loosen the soil...you can add some well rotted manure....mai pen rai.

They like a well drained soil (not waterlogged) but thay also like alot of water but they'll live through a dry spell ok only not grow much. Around here they are mostly a "no maintenance" sort of thing but they do respond well to a good fertile soil and regular water even in the dry season. If you take good care of you bananas you might be the only peron in the neighborhood who does (mostly bananas are a mai pen rai sort of thing around here) and your neighbors will likely be impressed by the huge bunches you will produce.....you might end up being the talk of the neighborhood!!!

Chownah

[buddhafly]

thanks chownah

know anything about non-chemical methods of keeping bugs from a garden away? off fruit and vegetables?

[chownah]

You don't need to worry about bugs on bananas. There is some leaf disease that they get but it isn't usually fatal and the number of fatalities is small and growing them is so easy you just grow some extras and you should be fine.

In the garden in general and on fruit trees, aphids can be a problem. If insecticides are not used then lady bugs (aka lady birds and lady beetles) will thrive and they will east the aphids. If I get an outbreak of aphids and the lady bugs don't seem to be present in enough numbers to handle it I spray with a solution of dish washing detergent in water. Make it about as strong as dishwater or maybe up to twice as strong....it should feel really slippery. Spray this right on the aphids on the plants....it dissolves the wax coating on their bodies so their bodily fluids leak out. This is not exactly organic but it is a generally accepted practice by just about everyone I have known in organic gardening circles. In a year I use far more detergent in washing dishes than I do in my garden.....it doesn't seem to hurt the plants.

Aphids don't transport themselves onto your vegetable and fruits....believe it or not it is ants that actually carry the aphids onto your plants..at least for the kinds of aphids that I commonly get in my garden. Ants farm aphids just like people farm cows. If you can keep the ants from carrying the aphids onto your plants then you will have solved the problem. There is a product called "tangle foot" available in the US. It is a really sticky substance that ants can not cross because it acts like rat glue to them...their legs would stick to it if they tried to cross it. If you put a band of it around the trunk of a tree then the ants can not travel up to place the aphids and it will effectively keep the aphids off.....assuming that some branch of the tree is not touching some object giving the ants a "back door" into the tree. The usually recommended method of applying it is to tape a tight band of paper around the tree first and apply the tangle foot to the paper. I've never used this product so I'm reporting what I have read......but......I think I've found this product in Thailand. I've located a really sticky substance which is usually smeared on yellow plastic bags and then the bags are tied or stapled to a 70 cm lathe sticking in the ground. Its purpose is to catch some flying insect (don't know which insect this is). I tracked it down and bought some. To test it out on ants I took a plastic bag and made a circular smear of the stuff on the bag and placed a piece of banana in the center of the smear and a few pieces outside the smear on the plastic and put it by a trail of ants. In one hour the banana inside the smear was untouched while the pieces outside the sphere was covered with ants....it works. I just did this a couple of days ago so I haven't yet used it in any pracatical way but I probably will soon. If anyone finds out what flying bug they are trapping with this stuff on the plastic bags I'd like to find out.

Some bugs you can pick off by hand.

Some bugs can be stopped using commercially available bacteria.

Some bugs are controlled by proper crop rotation...or by growing resistent varieties...or by doing companion planting....encouraging birds that eat bugs...praying mantis eat bugs...solarization kills some bugs in soils.

Maybe googling for "integrated pest management" would help.

This is a big topic and its nearly my bed time.

Chownah

[teletiger]

thanks chownah

know anything about non-chemical methods of keeping bugs from a garden away? off fruit and vegetables?

You could try weaver ants on the fruit trees. Very effective.

Regards