Field Visits

Cory made several hikes this week, visiting neighbor's gardens that may have room to plant peach palms and maybe a few other fruit trees.

Most of the gardens are across the river. People have gardens scattered around, sometimes due to the way land is inherited and split up among inheriting children, or bought and sold. Most are smaller than an acre and productivity tends to be low, especially for pasture. Soil fertility tends to be low and little is done to improve it.

It was encouraging to find many of the imported banana varieties growing well and producing better than the local varieties. Many of them were just planted in the past year or two, showing that they are spreading fast even though we aren't distributing many now, just what multiplies from the campus plants.

 

'Misi Luki' banana

 Poor soil area: 'Mysore' on left, local 'Gros Michel?' on right.

FHIA-25 cooking banana on left, "Cavendish?' on right