Tongzhou District: big White Goose for weeding and insect Control in Orchard

I don't want to administer medicine in the orchard, but weeding and catching insects are difficult. Yesterday (24), the reporter saw in the Lixiang Manor of Banjiehe Village, Yongledian Town, Tongzhou District, that this orchard invited a group of big white geese to deal with weeds and pests under the forest.

Lixiang Manor is an orchard managed by a group of young new farmers, covering an area of 1200 mu, all planted pear trees. When you walk into the orchard, you will find that the pear trees here are much denser than the traditional orchards, and the distance between the fruit trees is less than 1 meter. Zhao Xin, head of the park, said that here is built in accordance with the efficient modern orchard model. Pear trees have been planted with dwarfing and dense planting technology, with more than 300 trees per mu, while ordinary orchards have only planted 40 to 50 trees per mu. With this cultivation model, the annual output per mu can reach 7500 kg, two or three times that of the traditional orchard.

However, if the orchards are dwarfed and densely planted, the space under the forest is narrower, and the difficulty of manual weeding and catching insects is also increased. And this group of young people, many of whom have just been promoted to nanny, attach great importance to the quality and safety of fruit, and last year, the park received EU organic certification. Their common idea is to grow organic high-quality pears so that children can eat safely and at ease. No one wants to use highly toxic chemicals to kill insects and grass.

They learned that raising geese under the forest can have a biological control effect, so in May this year, 200 new geese were added to the orchard to "patrol and stand guard" under the forest every day. When they see pests and weeds, they will do their duty and wipe them out. For example, the most troublesome dog tail grass before, there are hundreds of seeds in a single grass seed, which propagates very quickly. With the big white goose this year, the grass seed has been eaten up, and this kind of weed can hardly be seen in the orchard. Recently, they have "hired" more than 100 chickens to assist geese in weeding and catching insects.

Zhao Xin said that these geese are like natural "lawnmowers" who are not picky eaters and eat all kinds of weeds. They also trained and trained the leading "goose commander", who got up early in the morning and was on duty under the fruit trees every day. In the past, weeding alone employed more than 10 temporary workers every year, which was both costly and laborious. Now, with their help, the workers are "liberated" and no longer have to work in the orchard on a hot day.

Li Songtao, senior engineer of the Industrial Development Department of the Municipal Gardening and Greening Bureau, said that now the three-dimensional breeding model of "raising geese in orchards" is more and more favored by fruit farmers. Instead of asking people to weed, "inviting geese to eat grass" not only costs less, the weeds in the orchard are gone, but also goose dung contains nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other elements needed for the growth of fruit trees, which can improve the fertility of the soil in the orchard and reduce fertilizer investment. the land is fertilized and the trees are strong. In addition, a few months later, the raised geese came out of the fence and gained a new income, which can be said to kill more than one stone.