Zhang Zhilan, a professional cherry grower

In Hetoudian Town, Laixi City, Shandong Province, there is a well-known professional cherry family. She is Zhang Zhilan, director of the Women's Congress in Yangjiazhai Village. In 2006, the net income of her contracted big cherry orchard was more than 100000 yuan, making her the top grower in Laixi. Zhang Zhilan not only made herself rich, but also took the lead in helping all the sisters in the village embark on the road to getting rich by planting big cherries. At present, Yangjiazhai Village has 296mu of big cherries, and more than 100 households are engaged in the production of big cherries. Each mu of big cherries can earn about 15000 yuan. Alone, the villagers can increase their income by 4.5 million yuan. Yangjiazhai Village has become a veritable rich village.

Zhang Zhilan

The development of big cherry production in Yangjiazhai village is inseparable from the active guidance and support of Zhang Zhilan, a member of the village branch and director of the Women's Congress. Since 1992, members of the party branch have identified the way to develop big cherry production by going out on inspection, and mobilize villagers to plant big cherries in the whole village. At that time, because most of the villagers were lack of understanding and could not make up their minds, village cadres took the lead in development. Zhang Zhilan, director of the Women's Congress, first persuaded her husband, who was out to work, to contract 4.7 mu of land and invest 10,000 yuan to plant big cherries. This year, only 13 families in the village developed 50 mu of big cherries.

As the saying goes, "it's hard to plant a delicious cherry tree, but it can't blossom without effort." Knowing this truth, Zhang Zhilan devoted all her thoughts to these cherry trees and worked them as carefully as a child. Three years later, Zhang Zhilan's efforts finally paid off. In 1995, her big cherry earned more than 5000 yuan. The real economic benefits are more convincing than any other language. In the past, people who were hesitant about the development of Big Cherry have taken the initiative to find the village committee and asked for the development of Big Cherry. Zhang Zhilan, director of the Women's Congress, played an active role in running to Yantai and Laiyang to help the masses contact seedlings, so that almost all the people in the village who are suitable for growing big cherries have planted big cherries, and the number of big cherry growers has reached 100.

After the development of Big Cherry has begun to take shape, management has become the most important issue. Since the cultivation of big cherries is mostly managed by the labor force of women in the village, Zhang Zhilan led a group of people from the Women's Congress to vigorously develop the demonstration base for women by carrying out "double-learning and double-comparison" activities, giving full play to the demonstration and guiding role of the base, and effectively increasing the training and guidance for women, so that women gradually master the skills of managing big cherries, and the economic benefits are significantly enhanced.

In the practice of big cherry management, Zhang Zhilan explored a set of successful experiences and new spring management techniques of big cherry, mainly as follows: (1) pull branches. After sprouting in spring, pulling the long branch to the level can weaken the apical dominance of the branch. (2) carving buds. Before sprouting in spring, the lateral buds and dorsal buds on the central leading branches and long branches are engraved horizontally about 1 cm above the front of the buds, reaching to the xylem, which can promote the growth of short branches and fruiting branches. (3) pick the heart. After budding, when the upright shoot on the horizontal branch grows to 10-15 cm, 5-8 cm is cut off from the top, which can promote the flower formation at the base of the new shoot in the same year. With the application of growth inhibitor, a ring-shaped ditch was opened under the periphery of the crown in the first ten days of April, and the medicine was mixed with water into the ditch, waiting for the water to seep and cover the soil. (4) soil, water and fertilizer management. Soil, after watering or rainfall in spring, hoe and loosen the soil in time to facilitate root growth; fertilizer and cherry growth results are concentrated in the first half of the growing season, and topdressing should be mastered after flowering to before the hard core of the fruit, mainly available fertilizer and phosphorus and potassium compound fertilizer; water, water before flowering, hard core water, fruit pre-harvest water. Flowering pollination, bee pollination generally 1 mu of land put a box of bees or Japanese wall bees, 1 mu of land can put about 300 wall bees, plus artificial pollination. Zhang Zhilan passed on her fruit planting experience unconditionally to her neighbors, printed these experiences and techniques into pamphlets and sent them to every woman who planted big cherries, which was very popular.

With management technology, big cherries grow fruit, but most of them dry up and fall to the ground due to lack of water. Yangjiazhai Village is a village short of water, with few Rain Water in spring and no convenient water sources nearby. At first, Zhang Zhilan tried to lead the masses to the Gaogezhuang Reservoir more than 10 miles away to transport water, but tractors could only bring back four buckets of water a day, which was time-consuming and laborious and far from being able to save the dried-up cherry trees. Looking at the growing cherry to kill alive, it is really heart-wrenching pain! Zhang Zhilan thought that we must find a way to solve the water problem nearby. She first invested 1500 yuan and drilled a deep well with good water. Then, under her positive suggestion, the two village committees issued an incentive policy for drilling wells, with a reward of 100 yuan for each well drilled, encouraging villagers to drill more wells. As a result, big cherry growers all drilled out of their own wells. With the guarantee of water supply and scientific management technology, big cherries have a bumper harvest.

Big cherries had a bumper harvest, but sales once became a difficult problem. In order to open up the sales market of big cherries, Zhang Zhilan and three members of the Women's Congress went to cities, hotels and supermarkets to promote big cherries everywhere. The Yangjiazhai cherry with good color, fragrance, taste and high quality is loved by customers and people. Laixi TV station conducted a special interview report on Big Cherry in Yangjiazhai Village, and the popularity of Big Cherry was greatly improved. Now, Qingdao, Yantai, Dalian, Weifang and other non-local customers are scrambling to the village to buy big cherries.