Off-season peach cultivation helps farmers get rich

The Taoyuanqing Planting Professional Cooperative in Jinghai District has accelerated the pace of fruit tree structure adjustment. By planting early-maturing peaches and late-maturing peaches, it has achieved "spring ahead" and "autumn delayed", and enjoyed the high benefits of off-season marketing.

Walking into the Taoyuanqing Planting Professional Cooperative in Taitou Town, Jinghai District, only a few peaches remain in the entire greenhouse. Ma Wenming, head of the cooperative, said that this year's early-maturing peaches have reached the final stage of harvest, and in another twenty days or so, open-field early-maturing peaches will ripen and go on the market. "This year I planted twelve greenhouses of peaches. For one greenhouse, flat peaches are more than five thousand jin, and nectarines are more than eight thousand jin. Total output has reached more than ninety thousand jin. In the early period, the earliest flat peaches in one greenhouse could sell for more than two hundred thousand, and in the later period nectarines sold for seven or eight yuan per jin, and one greenhouse could sell for sixty thousand."

Although few peaches are left in the greenhouses, customers still keep coming to pick and buy. Hao Guiwen, a visitor from Jinghai urban area, said that every year he brings friends here to pick, and this year he has already come three times. "His varieties are especially good and especially fresh. We brought clients to take a look. They thought these peaches all came from the south. Today they saw that we also have them in the north, and they felt especially fresh and especially happy."

Lin Liangyi, a visitor from Fujian, said: "I think these peaches are quite good. I ate one and it was quite sweet, both sweet and crisp."

Ma Wenming said that when he first started growing peach trees, he planted whatever others planted. The result of following the crowd was a concentrated marketing period and low fruit prices. Later he did the opposite. When choosing varieties, he either brought them to market earlier than others or later than others. He said: "Polarization, one is early-maturing, and the other is specially late-maturing. By staggering the peak marketing period, you can sell for a good price. For open-field late-maturing peaches, we can reach more than five yuan, while those marketed in a concentrated period are only a little more than one yuan, so the benefit is more than twice as much."

With the acceleration of fruit tree structure adjustment, Ma Wenming has become more and more enthusiastic about off-season planting. In addition to early-maturing and late-maturing peach varieties, he has also introduced other varieties such as grapes and cherries. Ma Wenming said: "Now it is more than two hundred mu. There are more than twenty varieties of peaches, and some grapes and cherries have also been introduced. The grapes were planted in April last year, and this greenhouse will be ready for market in another month or so. The open-field ones have just bloomed, and these are about to enter the coloring stage."

Through years of planting experience, Ma Wenming has become a well-known peach-growing expert in Jinghai District. Now, he not only leads surrounding cooperatives to jointly plant off-season peach varieties, but also provides technical guidance and sales channels free of charge for multiple picking parks. Ma Wenming said: "We have driven five or six cooperatives to also start planting this now. In the future, we will have unified management and unified sales. The seedlings are transferred to them without adding any fees, and technical guidance is free. Through the accumulation of many years of planting experience, Longfeng Cooperative, Lvzhihai, Liangxin Cooperative and Jinmei all have technical support and help. After all, they have just come into contact with this area and are not familiar with the outside market. I do my best to connect them with buyers and solve the sales problem."