Successfully self-cultivated a garden of yellow apricot flowers

Realizing that apricot blossom is a typical tree that many people love and choose to display on every occasion of Tet and spring, so it has high economic value, Mr. Pham Ba Chung in Nhu Le village, Hai Le commune, Quang Tri town had the idea of building a model of growing yellow apricot blossoms for sale. After a period of implementation, his family's apricot garden initially brought quite high economic efficiency, and was encouraged by the commune's farmers' association to invest in building a model garden in the locality.

Mr. Chung (left) shares his experience in growing yellow apricot flowers - Photo: KS

Mr. Chung has a special passion for growing and playing with ornamental plants. Many years ago, on his family's 3 sao of land, he used 1 sao to build a pig farm, the remaining 2 sao to grow mung trees. Over time, pigs often suffered from diseases, mung trees were no longer a valuable ornamental plant as before, so he searched and researched ways to convert production to be more suitable and effective.

Seeing that the five-petal yellow apricot flowers in Hai Le are very beautiful, the flower growing technique is also quite simple, mainly requiring care, low investment cost, so 7 years ago, he decided to choose apricot trees to replace the garden.

At the end of the second lunar month, after each season of apricot blossoms blooming and then withering, forming seeds, he went to the houses in the commune that planted apricot blossoms to select mature seeds to bring back to his garden to sow on the loose soil that he had prepared in advance (composting the soil with coconut fiber, compost, ensuring the soil was cool) and covered the soil with a thin net. After 1 - 1.5 months, the apricot tree grew about 15 - 20 cm, he separated the tree into small pots. About 5 - 6 months later, he continued to move the seedlings to larger pots for the tree to grow better.

Apricot trees grown from seeds grow very slowly, it takes 2-3 years to start flowering, but it is convenient to shape the tree as desired. In the first years, Mr. Chung tried to grow a few dozen trees, the apricot trees grew well, blooming right on the occasion of Lunar New Year, many buds, when blooming the yellow petals are very beautiful. From then on, he was excited to propagate more trees.

Thanks to his passion, ingenuity and creativity, Mr. Chung has developed his family's apricot garden with about 1,000 trees, including 3 sizes, the largest is 6.5 years old, the medium size is 4 - 5 years old, the small size is 2 - 3 years old.

The price of mai trees depends on the size, on average 5 million VND/tree for medium and small size, large trees can cost up to tens of millions of VND. Although not widely advertised, many customers know Mr. Chung's reputation since he was growing and supplying mai trees, they come to the garden to choose trees to buy, so the output is favorable.

For small and medium sized trees, he sells them at the same price of 5 million VND/tree and lets customers choose the tree they like without worrying about the price being higher than other places. Thanks to that, in the past 3 years, he has sold an average of more than 20 large and small apricot trees each year, bringing in a good income for his family.

Thanks to self-seeding and planting, the investment cost for Mr. Chung's family's apricot garden is very low, mainly labor and time spent on care, watering, and pest control for the trees. Mr. Chung shared: "The biggest difficulty of my family's apricot garden right now is the source of irrigation water.

We are currently exploiting underground water to irrigate the plants, the pump has a small capacity so the watering is very slow. Every day I spend a lot of effort pulling the watering hose for the apricot garden from early morning to late afternoon. If the irrigation system is more secure, the plants will grow faster.

In the near future, if supported by all levels in terms of capital and technology, the family will invest in an automatic irrigation system to reduce the time and effort spent on watering the plants. At the same time, when there is a modern irrigation system, I will continue to convert 1 sao of land currently raising pigs to grow apricot trees, build a systematic apricot garden, and provide the market with more products."

Currently, in the province there are many ornamental garden models but a successful self-cultivated apricot garden like Mr. Chung's is very rare. Chairman of the Farmers' Association of Hai Le Commune Bui Thuong said: "Mr. Chung's apricot garden was selected by the association and reported to the local Party Committee and government to be selected as a model garden, contributing to the construction of new rural areas.

The Association is researching support policies and guiding his family to complete the criteria to meet model garden standards such as renovating the garden to make it more aesthetically pleasing, investing in an automatic irrigation system...

At the same time, encourage members and local farmers to learn from Mr. Chung's experience to build suitable economic development models, bring high economic efficiency, create jobs for themselves and their family members, and strive for sustainable economic development.

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