Tainan pomelo orchards are lush and green, half of the pomelo farmers use grass cover cultivation to make the pomelos twice as sweet
The "weeds" that everyone wants to eradicate have made the orchards more beautiful! Walking into the pomelo orchards in Madou, Tainan, you see a sea of green, with trees full of heavy, green pomelos that will be ready for harvest in just ten days. Below, the ground is covered with all kinds of vegetation: creeping spurge spreading along the ground, purslane with small yellow and red flowers attracting swarms of bees and butterflies, and some pomelo farmers even raise chickens in the orchards, with roosters striding across the grass, adding more life to the lush green pomelo orchards.
Elderly pomelo farmers in Tainan have long protected the local pomelos, using environmentally friendly grass cover cultivation and appropriately preserving the vegetation in the orchards. Currently, nearly half of the pomelo orchards use grass cover cultivation, which not only protects soil and water but also helps fruit trees grow and improves pomelo quality, further forming Tainan's unique diverse pomelo orchard landscape.
Grass cover cultivation facts:
Common orchard grass cover groundcover plants include: green manure soybean Tainan No. 7, perennial peanut, hairy vetch, velvet bean, Bermuda grass, bahia grass, four-petaled purslane, creeping spurge, dichondra, fly-wing grass, crotalaria, duck tongue herb, yellow wood sorrel, white clover, indigofera, yellow alfalfa, Chinese glory bower, Wedelia, carpet grass, tropical carpet grass, centipedegrass, and broadleaf carpet grass.
Benefits of grass cover cultivation:
1. It avoids the environmental harm of herbicides, while increasing soil organic matter content and supplying nutrients needed by microorganisms, helping to maintain and enhance soil fertility.
2. It can reduce surface runoff, increase rainwater infiltration into the soil layers, and improve the efficiency of soil moisture utilization.
3. Appropriate grass cover can slow the direct scouring of topsoil by rain, effectively increasing soil erosion resistance and preventing nutrient loss.
4. It can improve the orchard growing environment, for example by reducing pest and disease outbreaks through ecological balance, and by regulating moisture and temperature.
5. The root systems of groundcover plants can loosen the soil, increase soil aeration and permeability, and help fruit trees grow.
6. Groundcover plants can beautify the orchard landscape, increase biological richness and diversity, provide farmers with a comfortable working environment, and also attract tourists, benefiting the development of the leisure and tourism industry.