Growing blueberries and purple sweet potatoes together brings in 110,000 yuan per mu, and increasing income through planting is no dream

Original title: Growing purple sweet potatoes in blueberry fields yields a double "king" benefit

Villagers are harvesting purple sweet potatoes in a blueberry field.

Blueberries have been listed by the World Health Organization as the fruit with the best nutritional value, and can be called the "king of fruits"; purple sweet potatoes are rich in selenium and anthocyanins, and are called the "king" of tuber crops.

When these two crops, both with very high economic value, "meet" on one piece of land, the output benefit of the plot can be imagined.

Recently, in the Lecui blueberry planting base inside the Nanchuan Ecological Agriculture Grand View Garden, villagers were harvesting purple sweet potatoes.

"Look at this purple sweet potato, it weighs at least one or two jin. I never expected that interplanting purple sweet potatoes in blueberries would make them grow so well," said villager Tang Yulan.

Wang Guangjian, head of the Lecui blueberry base, introduced that the base has a planting area of more than 700 mu, of which more than 400 mu had just recently come into production, and the blueberry bushes are relatively short. The spacing between the bushes is relatively large, and after the summer blueberry harvest the land is completely empty. Why not use this "empty period" of the land to interplant other cash crops?

So they thought of purple sweet potatoes, which also have relatively high economic value.

Wang Guangjian said that with changes in people's dietary concepts, "eating coarse foods" has now become a synonym for health and fashion. In addition to the nutrients found in ordinary sweet potatoes, purple sweet potatoes are also rich in selenium and anthocyanins, making them the "king" among tuber crops.

This year, the base planted high-quality purple sweet potatoes in more than 100 mu of blueberry fields, adopting a "blueberry and purple sweet potato" interplanting model, which both saves land and increases income.

Wang Guangjian said that interplanting purple sweet potatoes with blueberries has several advantages: First, blueberry planting requires large amounts of organic fertilizer, and when purple sweet potatoes are interplanted among the plants in the strawberry fields, the purple sweet potatoes can fully use the fertilizer left over from blueberry planting for their growth, achieving relatively high yields without adding too much fertilizer; second, the cultivation conditions of ordinary blueberry orchards are very good and are relatively little affected by natural disasters; third, purple sweet potatoes do not compete with blueberries for land, and can be planted in the slightly lower strawberry fields; fourth, the input cost is low and management is convenient, so relatively high yields and good returns can be obtained without too much investment.

Speaking of returns, Wang Guangjian said that one mu of blueberries can produce more than 1,000 jin of fruit annually, with an output value of about 100,000 yuan. When purple sweet potatoes are interplanted with blueberries, the yield of purple sweet potatoes is about more than 3,000 jin per mu, and at the current market price of 3.5 yuan per jin, the output value is about 10,000 yuan per mu. One piece of land, two incomes, and when the two are added together, it can produce 110,000 yuan.

"Blueberries are harvested in summer, and after the harvest, holes are dug to plant purple sweet potatoes. Blueberry orchards have sufficient light and a large amount of vacant space, making them suitable for interplanting purple sweet potatoes, with the dual effects of nourishing the soil and increasing economic income," Wang Guangjian said. It should be noted that purple sweet potatoes are short-day crops and need sufficient light and high light intensity, so blueberry orchards with trees aged 5 years or more, where the blueberry plants are already too large, are no longer suitable for interplanting purple sweet potatoes. (Text/Photo by correspondent Li Ming)