Growing Fruit in Leshan, Zhejiang Merchants Have Invested Nearly a Million Yuan
In the area of Guanmiao Township and Jianfeng Township in Shizhong District, Leshan City, there are quite a few watermelon growers, and Ren Lin'an from Taizhou, Zhejiang is one of them. From 2014 to now, he has successively planted around ten kinds of fruit, including watermelon, cherry, orange, Chinese bayberry, strawberry and so on. On March 30, a reporter from Sanjiang Metropolis Daily walked into Ren Lin'an's orchard.
Ren Lin'an inspecting the strawberry patch
After coming to Leshan in 2002, Ren Lin'an had been in business the whole time, running food wholesale, a teahouse with chess and card games, mold sales, clothing sales and so on. In 2014, Ren Lin'an contracted several dozen mu of land in Group 4 of Leigou Village, Guanmiao Township to grow watermelons, and together with a friend's watermelon field set up the Lujian Melon and Fruit Planting Professional Cooperative. After the watermelons were successfully planted, he went on to plant cherries, oranges, Chinese bayberries, strawberries and other fruits, and by now there are around ten kinds of fruit here.
Right now it is strawberry season, and Ren Lin'an took the reporter to his strawberry patch. The strawberry patch covers about 6 mu, and to save on costs he uses a technique of interplanting watermelons and strawberries.
As for managing strawberries, anyone who has worked in agriculture knows that the most troublesome part is pest control. After planting strawberries, Ren Lin'an asked many people how to use insecticidal spray safely, effectively and without toxins, and he used washing powder + urea + water to mix a spray specifically for killing aphids. Strawberries have another enemy, the green caterpillar, which he kills with a homemade enzyme preparation.
Because no pesticides are used and no ripening is forced, these strawberries are not large in size and take a long time to ripen, and their "looks" are not impressive either, but they taste sweet and fragrant.
Ren Lin'an said that some chemical fertilizer is still used in the strawberry field now, and when conditions are right he will also use compost, so that the strawberries grow more naturally.
From when he started growing melons and fruit until now, Ren Lin'an has invested nearly a million yuan, but he is full of confidence, saying that as long as he keeps growing fruit that everyone can trust, there will be a return. As for the future, he hopes to build a circular agricultural economy here. There is so much livestock farming around the orchard, and the manure and so on from the livestock farms can be made into organic fertilizer to grow the orchard, while the surrounding straw can be used as feed for the livestock farms, ultimately building a leisure farm and a green organic farm, which would be just wonderful.