How to Choose a Nursery Site for Cultivating Sugar Mandarin Grafting Rootstock Seedlings

The nursery site should be chosen in a place with convenient transportation and good conditions for water and electricity supply, somewhat distant from mandarin orchards or separated by a natural barrier, to reduce infection by dangerous pests and diseases. The terrain is required to be flat, with a slope not exceeding 5 degrees, and with no air or water pollution nearby. The soil should preferably be sandy loam, loam, or light loam with deep soil layers, slight acidity, loose and fertile texture, and few pests and diseases. The soil layer thickness is generally no less than 30cm, the groundwater level should not exceed 1m, and the pH should be 5.5-7.5. The nursery site should have good drainage and be irrigable in summer. Never choose garden plots where bayberry (Myrica rubra) has been planted for cultivating seedlings, and avoid continuous cropping in the nursery site; newly opened land is best.

1. Selection of nursery sites for farmland seedling cultivation

(1) In plain water-network areas, avoid choosing low-lying places with poor drainage and hardened, heavy clay soil.

(2) In mountainous areas, avoid choosing cold-water paddies or muddy, poorly structured fields as nursery sites.

(3) Farmland where the previous crop was vegetables or tuber crops, where soil pest and disease infection is severe, and where weeds are overgrown, should also be avoided as a nursery site.

2. For nursery site selection in mountainous areas, choose the middle and lower parts of hillsides. When opening up agricultural sloping land, sparse woodland, shrubland, or cut-over land as nursery sites, they should be built into level terraces. Sunny southeast slopes and southwest slopes are preferable. Low-lying areas where cold air collects, mountain passes with severe wind damage, dry and barren hilltops, and valleys with insufficient sunlight are all unsuitable as nursery sites.