Half of the pomelo farmers in Tainan's Wentan pomelo orchards practice sod culture, filling the groves with lush greenery and making the fruit twice as sweet
The "weeds" that everyone curses have made the orchards more beautiful! Walking into a Wentan pomelo orchard in Madou, Tainan, you see a sea of green, with sturdy green pomelos hanging all over the trees, ready for harvest in just ten days. Below, the ground is covered with all kinds of vegetation: prostrate spurge creeping 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 orchard, with roosters striding across the grass, adding yet more life to the lush green pomelo groves.
Older pomelo farmers in Tainan have long protected the local Wentan pomelo, using environmentally friendly sod culture and appropriately preserving the vegetation in the orchards. Nearly half of the Wentan pomelo orchards now use sod culture, which not only protects soil and water but also helps the fruit trees grow and improves the quality of the pomelos, creating Tainan's uniquely diverse Wentan pomelo orchard landscape.
Sod culture basics:
Common orchard groundcover plants include: green manure soybean Tainan No. 7, perennial peanut, common vetch, velvet bean, Bermuda grass, bahia grass, four-petaled purslane, prostrate spurge, dichondra, Phyllanthus urinaria, Alysicarpus vaginalis, duck tongue herb, creeping woodsorrel, white clover, Indigofera spicata, black medick, Hedyotis diffusa, Wedelia chinensis, carpet grass, tropical carpet grass, centipede grass, and Paspalum conjugatum.
Benefits of sod culture:
1. It avoids the environmental harm caused by herbicides, while also increasing soil organic matter content, supplying nutrients needed by microorganisms, and helping to maintain and improve soil fertility.
2. It can reduce topsoil runoff, increase rainwater infiltration into the soil layers, and improve the efficiency of soil water use.
3. Appropriate grass cover can reduce direct rain erosion of topsoil, 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, increasing soil aeration and permeability, which helps fruit trees grow.
6. Groundcover plants can beautify the orchard landscape, increase biological richness and diversity, provide farmers with a comfortable working environment, and attract tourists, benefiting the development of leisure tourism.