Chapter 374: The success of a crop depends on fertilizer
With Gao Mingcheng's physical fitness, harvesting an acre of rice was just a drizzle and he could finish the job easily. He borrowed someone else's thresher, threshed the rice in the field, and then packed it in snakeskin bags.
His yard was spacious, so he didn't need to compete with others for the threshing ground. He could just carry the rice back home.
The cement floor in the yard was spotless, as it had been swept clean by Mei in advance. The chickens were even kept outside to prevent them from running around, otherwise they would pull chicken manure into the rice.
The golden rice was poured onto the cement ground, then broken up and spread out to dry with special farm tools. When exposed to the sun, the rice glowed with golden light and looked particularly beautiful.
The rice seeds grown by Grandma Xi are hybrid rice that are promoted by the government today, and their yield is much higher than the old rice seeds.
In the 1970s, the rice yield per mu was only about 500 kilograms. Now with the use of hybrid rice, the yield per mu has increased to more than 800 kilograms. Some well-tended fields can yield nearly 1,000 kilograms per mu.
The fact that people can gradually live a good life with no shortage of food and clothing is related to the overall economic improvement of the country, and more importantly, it is related to Yuan Longping.
Because Gao Mingcheng had been in the county for a long time, he had neglected the management of the rice in the fields. When he was carrying the load, he estimated the weight and found it to be just around 800 kilograms.
Even so, he was still satisfied.
After spreading the rice out to dry, he went to the corner to dig up the compost. This rotted farm manure would be spread into the rice field to fertilize the field when plowing.
When it came to using fertilizer, Gao Mingcheng felt stretched because his family didn't raise pigs or cows, and few people lived in the village, so the amount of farm manure was too little, but he had many places where he needed fertilizer.
In addition to the crops in the fields, the orchards on Xiaofu Mountain also need to be fertilized regularly so that the fruit trees can thrive.
Got to buy fertilizer!
And it has to be farmyard manure.
Chemical fertilizers can be used appropriately with farmyard manure, but you cannot use chemical fertilizers all the time. Not to mention the problem of soil compaction, just talking about the taste, the vegetables and fruits grown with farmyard manure taste much better than those grown with chemical fertilizers.
Where can I buy farmyard manure? There are no large farms in the village. Generally speaking, the fertilizers piled up by the family are only enough for their own use, and there is no surplus to sell to others.
Gao Mingcheng frowned and thought about asking the families in the village who raised many pigs.
Just as he was about to walk out, he heard Xuanyuemei shouting, "Where are you going? I just opened a watermelon. It's so sweet. Come and have some."
When he heard that the watermelon was ready to be opened, Gao Mingcheng didn't even bother to go out and hurried to the kitchen.
On the table, there was indeed a sliced watermelon. Xuanyuemei was sitting on a stool, about to scoop out half of the watermelon with a porcelain spoon to eat. As for the other half of the watermelon, it was cut into five pieces.
This is what it’s like when there are few people in the family, you can eat watermelon in a generous way.
Gao Mingcheng picked up a slice of watermelon and started to eat it. He ate it so quickly that not even much juice flowed out.
"Sweet! Refreshing! I had forgotten I was looking in the watermelon patch."
"Hey, I went to check. The watermelons are fine, but some of the pear melons are too old. I told my brother last time that if we were not at home and some vegetables in the field were getting old, I would let them pick them and eat them, but he refused." Xuanyuemei said with a smile, and pointed to several pear melons in the basin. They were indeed ripe, and their skins were white.
"How many watermelons are ripe in the field?" Gao Mingcheng asked.
"There must be five or six, and the rest will be gone soon. You picked some small watermelons this year, and the remaining ones have all grown very big, but some of them have been eaten by something. They looked fine on the top, but when you turned them over, you'd see that the bottom had been eaten away!" Many beautiful voices were a little angry, but there was nothing they could do about it.
There are many animals that eat watermelons, such as badgers and wild hogs. But here, if the fruits are eaten, it is most likely done by rats.
Well, it's just so ordinary!
After eating the watermelon, Gao Mingcheng finally went out. He was going to pick up the straw left in the field. Then it was time to load the tractor with plowing tools and start plowing the field.
A few days passed after a busy day. Under the scorching sun, the villagers of Gaojia Village were sweating profusely, busy with the most important farm work of the year.
After the double harvests every year, people can lose a few pounds.
The weather was good this year. It was sunny before and after the rice matured, so there was no damage to the rice. It only rained once after the rice transplanting was completed.
The rain came at such a timely moment that the villagers praised it. They were particularly satisfied with the good weather this year.
They look forward to a good harvest of late rice and a prosperous year, but at the same time they are afraid of drought.
In the second half of previous years, there would be some droughts, but last year's drought was the most severe, which made everyone secretly worried.
However, Gao Mingcheng did not have this worry because he knew that the weather this year was very good and that there would not be such severe droughts in recent years.
As for the mild drought, it is normal because they are surrounded by mountains on three sides and there is no big river in the entire county, so when there is less rainfall in the second half of the year, it will naturally become dry.
The water in the reservoir will quickly decrease, leaving only a shallow bottom, waiting to be filled again after the following year's rainfall.
Taking advantage of the rain and everyone being free, Gao Mingcheng went to the old village.
First he looked for the person who had asked him for the queen bee last time.
The man's name was Gao Zhijun. His family was the second unit in the family, so the location was relatively remote. It was not crowded with other houses, but was backed by the mountain.
Therefore, their family raises more pigs and makes a lot of money from selling pigs every year.
"Zhijun, you asked me for queen bees last time. I have already divided them into boxes. I will deliver them to you in two days." Gao Mingcheng walked into their yard familiarly and found Gao Zhijun.
Gao Zhijun was chopping grass for pigs. On the stove next to him was a large iron pot in which pig feed was being cooked.
Pigs have a large appetite, so if you raise a lot of pigs, you have to frequently pull, chop and cook the grass. This is also very tiring work, and if you don't feed them, the pigs will grow slowly.
"Oh, thank you." Gao Zhijun smiled when he heard that there was a queen bee. But the next second he asked embarrassedly how much it cost.
Gao Mingcheng said straightforwardly, "Let's not talk about money. I'll give you these bees to raise first to see if you can raise them. If you can, you can give me two kilograms of honey afterwards."
"Okay, that's fine! I will definitely give you two kilograms of honey when the time comes." Gao Zhijun nodded happily in agreement.
After talking about bees, Gao Mingcheng asked, "You raise so many pigs every year. Can you use up all the pig manure?"
Gao Zhijun said: "My parents have reclaimed a lot of wasteland, so we can use it all."
Gao Mingcheng thought it was a bit hopeless, but he still said, "In the fall, my orchard will need some fertilizer. Do you have any you can sell to me?"
Hearing the word "sell", Gao Zhijun hesitated for a few seconds and then said, "Okay, if there are extra ones, I'll sell them to you."
Gao Mingcheng not only said this to Gao Zhijun, but also to other people in the village who raised a lot of pigs. These people were all happy to do business with Gao Mingcheng and said they would definitely sell their extra pigs to him.
Autumn fertilization is very important for orchards, as it is related to a series of matters that are closely related to the fruit farmers' interests, such as the budding of fruit trees in the next spring, the early or late flowering, the amount of flowering, the expansion of fruits, etc.
Therefore, autumn fertilization is more important than spring fertilization, as it is the time when the largest amount of fertilizer is applied and the most comprehensive nutrients are provided throughout the year.
(End of this chapter)
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