NARI Tambul, in the highlands have done some great work on potato and late blight, the awful disease that has really cut into farmer profit (and health) as they’ve needed up to 14 sprays to get the crop through to harvest. Four new cultivars are available, that need just one insecticide and fungicide spray to […]
There is some confusion between two quite different vegetables. Labu siam, pictured below is known (in English) as Choko. This vegetable is used for it’s fruit and the green tips make enjoyable and very tasty green shoot/steamed vegetables. These are particularly nice in a stew, curry with some meat or fish. Labu siam grows best […]
The best cauliflowers grow in temperate conditions, very slowly during winter and build up very large leaves that have the ‘power’ to produce a large white head in the early spring. They grow best in high fertility soils, rich in compost- and under those conditions will develop very large leaves that may be up to […]
Heavy rainfall washes away the vegetable seeds and/or damages the crops. Rain shelters can be the solution for that. In Lurang two proper rain shelters were built by the gardeners with assistance of the ComDev agriculture officer. Thick transparent plastic was imported from Semarang. Bamboo and wood were used to support the plastic. In the […]
Tomato-F1 ‘Waad Rijk Zwaan’- Experiment in Wetar, MBD – November 2012 Waad Rijk Zwaan kindly made available four cultivars/lines (refer table below) for testing purposes on Wetar Island in Maluku Barat Daya. Farmer growers and the commercial kitchen who were the main buyers of tomatoes are very happy with these new cultivars, as this very […]
September 5th, 2012 The women active in the test garden in Lurang and their trainer were very proud to harvest the first potatoes ever grown on Wetar. The potatoes seem to be the right variety to grow in tropical low land gardens, close to the ocean: we got nice and firm potatoes with an excellent […]
5 September 2012 Para wanita aktif di kebun tes di Lurang dan pelatih mereka sangat bangga untuk memanen kentang pertama yang pernah ditanam di Wetar. Kentang tampaknya menjadi varietas yang cocok untuk ditanam di daerah tropis dataran rendah, dekat dengan laut: kami mendapatkan hasil kentang yang bagus dengan rasa yang sangat enak! Lahan uji sangat […]
On Wetar Island we may be experiencing a new tomato disease – Tomato Yellow leaf curl virus. A company in Java has very kindly provided seeds for evaluation – they are being planted in 20 farmer experiments. Here is the photo of the rain shelter used in Java.
The sheet on brassicas- that is the family of all cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, pak choi, chinese cabbage etc- is available on the page called Good Agricultural practices. Here we show a cauli grown during a lot of rain in 2010. Photo taken in early August. These cauli’s were started in a polybag with insect proof […]