Yingbuluo Nanguo Pear Builds Its Brand Through Scientific Management
1. Fruit tree pruning: Through winter pruning and spring pruning, the fruiting branches are spread out and an umbrella-shaped canopy is formed to achieve ventilation and light penetration. Pay special attention to summer pruning (mid-summer pruning), removing all water sprouts, back branches and new shoots from mature fruit trees, reducing waste of tree nutrients, maintaining the canopy in a moderate state, and ensuring that all nutrients produced by the leaves are effectively used for fruit growth and tree development.
2. Applying farmyard manure: Farmyard manure has a complete range of nutrients and is the most ideal fertilizer for improving fruit quality. Bao Dianhong's orchard applies farmyard manure once every two years, with 200-250 kg of fully decomposed farmyard manure per tree, plus some chemical fertilizer each year. He believes that doing so can both keep the tree vigorous and control excessive tree growth that causes canopy shading, ensuring fruit coloration and improving fruit quality.
3. Artificial pollination and fruit thinning: Artificial pollination is an effective measure for improving the fruit-setting rate, and pollen from Xuehua Pear, Ya Pear and Bai Pear is best. He advocates pollinating every flower in each cluster (generally 5-7 flowers per inflorescence) by hand and setting fruit. To increase pollination speed, he uses a special little tool he developed himself, which can pollinate all the flowers in an inflorescence at one time. When thinning fruit, keep 1 of the best fruits per inflorescence and remove all the rest; this is one of the important measures for improving fruit quality.
4. Pest and disease control: The main problems in Nanguo pear orchards include the pear fruit borer, peach fruit borer, pear psylla, yellow aphid, as well as black spot and powdery mildew. He observes the orchard every day, and as soon as he finds pests or diseases, he sprays promptly. The pesticide concentration should be appropriate; higher concentration is not always better. Spraying should be even, and the tree above and below, inside and outside, and both sides of the leaves must all be sprayed: spraying only 4-5 times a year in the orchard is enough to solve pest and disease problems.
5. Growing grass in the tree basin: Bao Dianhong does not advocate clearing all the weeds in the tree basin. On the contrary, he lets the tree basin grow full of grass. When the grass grows to 20-30 cm high, it is turned into the soil to fertilize the field. At the same time, growing grass in the tree basin helps natural enemies live and reproduce, playing a role in biological control of pests and diseases.
6. Artificial leaf removal to promote Nanguo pear coloration: Bao Dianhong once accidentally discovered that the leaves on the branches of a Nanguo pear tree had almost all fallen, but the fruit was red. So the next year he carried out a leaf-removal experiment, and the effect was indeed quite good. 10-15 days before harvest, concentrate efforts on removing all leaves that block light from reaching the Nanguo pears, that is, all leaves within 10-15 cm around the fruit, so that the fruit receives full sunlight. After 4-5 days, all the Nanguo pears on the tree were colored. He believes that one more colored Nanguo pear means one more share of income.
In the autumn of 2006, Professor Guo from Shenyang Agricultural University came to Yingbuluo Village to hold a training class on artificial leaf removal to promote coloration. Through the training, Bao Dianhong realized that artificial leaf removal not only promotes Nanguo pear coloration, improves appearance quality and commercial value, but also significantly improves Nanguo pear quality, greatly increases sugar content, reduces fruit acidity, and increases anthocyanin and vitamin C content, achieving two benefits at once. In 2007, all 200 Nanguo pear trees in Bao Dianhong's own orchard were treated by leaf removal. The red fruit rate reached 84%, the yellow fruit rate was 9%, and the green fruit rate was 7%. Leaf-removed colored Nanguo pears sold for 2 yuan more per kg than untreated ones. His family produces 10,000 kg of Nanguo pears each year, which can increase returns by 20,000 yuan.
7. Benefits of applying characters: Starting in 2006, he began experiments with applying characters to fruit. Before the fruit colored, he applied auspicious characters such as "Gongxi Facai", "Wanshi Ruyi" and "Xingfu Changshou", further enhancing the commercial value of the product.