Kaixian County, Chongqing: Tan Huaisheng, Qingyang Village, Linjiang Town, innovates boldly to grow peaches

Peach trees in the north bear fruit in the south

Tan Huaisheng thinned fruit for peach trees

Tan Huaisheng thinned fruit for peach trees

On a small hillside in Qingyang Village, Linjiang Town, peach trees with luxuriant branches are covered with peaches the size of ping-pong balls.

"pick all the peaches that are dense and not good, and remove the branches that grow into the sky."... " Recently, the reporter came to this peach orchard, more than 10 villagers under the command of an energetic old man, are thinning fruit and sprouting peach trees. This old man is the owner of Taoyuan-Tan Huaisheng.

Groping painstakingly, the peach trees in the north take root in the south

In 2009, Tan Huaisheng came up with the idea of growing peaches when he saw the news that someone in Shandong Province had grown late-ripening peaches on CCTV's Daily Agricultural Economics program.

There are great differences in temperature, humidity and soil, so it is not easy to make late-ripening peaches suitable for growing in the north bear fruit in the south.

"only if you do it will you not regret it." Tan Huai-sheng, who has always dared to think and dare to do it, regardless of other people's persuasion, with a book on peach planting and management given to him by Shandong fruit growers, resolutely bought peach seedlings and began to plant them.

In which season do you apply fertilizer? Which season is the weeding? After the peach saplings were planted, Tan Huaisheng looked after each sapling as if he were his own child, as written in the book.

In the spring of 2010, peach trees sprouted, giving Tan Huaisheng hope.

"that's all it takes to grow peaches." Tan Huisheng was secretly proud of himself, but before long, the leaves began to turn yellow and withered, and he panicked.

"is it a worm?" After careful examination, Tan Huaisheng did not find worms. While looking for relevant information, he consulted experts and finally found the real cause of the yellowing and withering of the leaves-- bacterial perforation.

"doesn't the book say that June and July are the highest incidence of the disease? why did it appear in March?" Tan Huisheng realized at this time that because of the great differences in temperature, humidity, and soil between Shandong and Kaixian, it would not be feasible to plant them with reference to a practical book in the north.

Since then, Tan Huaisheng began a long exploration and research. During the first year of hanging the fruit, the peach fell off and the taste was poor. He decided not to go on the market and lost more than 100,000 yuan.

In 2015, Tan Huaisheng earned more than 300000 yuan from his peach orchard. Through hard work and persistence, he made the northern peach tree take root in the south.

Innovative planting to improve the quality of peaches

Late-ripening peach has long growth cycle and high sweetness, which is deeply liked by consumers, and the main factor affecting the sweetness of peach is the weather.

"these peaches are afraid of rain and heat." Tan Huaisheng said that if there is continuous overcast and rainy weather, the sweetness of peaches will decrease, and Kaixian County is a place with high heat and humidity and more Rain Water, which poses a great challenge to how to ensure the quality of peaches.

According to Tan Huisheng, in order to resist floods, orchards should be particular about the location of orchards. They should choose places with larger slopes and are not easy to accumulate water, and the soil had better have a higher sediment content, which is more conducive to water penetration.

"Last year, some peaches in the peach orchard had a sweetness of 20%, but only about 15% after a few more days, because it rained for several days in a row." Tan Huaisheng said.

"the most difficult thing to guard against now is the continuous rainy days when picking peaches." Tan Huaisheng said that the peach orchard has dozens of mu, and it is not realistic to build a shelter for the orchard. He can only adjust the picking period appropriately through the weather forecast to ensure the quality of the peaches as much as possible. If it rains for too long, there will be nothing he can do. I hope he can explore and solve this problem in the future.

Repair cold storage to prolong the shelf life of peaches

After the peach is picked, the ethylene in the air is combined with the internal receptor of the peach to accelerate the ripening of the peach, and the peach will soften one day and rot the next day. "Peach preservation" has become a difficult problem in the industry.

"at present, I keep the annual output of Taoyuan at 70,000 or 80,000 jin." Tan Huaisheng said that because the peach has a short shelf life after being picked from the tree, it will rot if it is not sold in time, so he has controlled the output.

While controlling the output, Tan Huaisheng also worked hard on how to prolong the shelf life of peaches, and building a cold storage was his bold attempt.

Last year, Tan Huaisheng invested hundreds of thousands of yuan to build a cold storage next to the orchard to refrigerate peaches that were not sold in time to extend the shelf life. By groping, he found that things were not as simple as they thought. It turned out that after the peach was refrigerated, the original taste changed and lost the crisp fragrance when it was just picked.

"I don't believe that peaches can't be refrigerated." Tan Huisheng, who likes to be serious, goes from minus 5 ℃, 4 ℃, 3 ℃. From 40% humidity, 50% humidity. After testing in turn, after many attempts, he finally found that only when the temperature was below zero 0.5 ℃ and the humidity was about 80%, the shelf life of the peach could be extended by about 20 days, and the taste would not change.

"now I am experimenting with two other kinds of peaches in this series." Tan Huaisheng said that the two new kinds of peaches will be on the market nearly a month earlier and later than the current variety, respectively. If successful, fresh peaches will be available throughout the autumn in Taoyuan.