Red date cultivation helps Zhang Hong, an employee of the 64th Regiment, get rich

On October 9, the author walked into Zhang Hong's red date orchard in the 7th Company of the 64th Regiment, Fourth Division of the **Production and Construction Corps. At first glance, plump, sweet and crisp brown Jun jujubes hung all over the branches, like strings of candied haws. Looking at the full fruit, the ripe fruit hanging in clusters, Zhang Hong was immersed in the joy of a bumper harvest. During the interview, Zhang Hong picked up the red dates being dried and said: "The Jun jujubes I grow are large and uniform, good-looking in appearance, and high in sugar content. The yield is expected to be about 500 kg per mu. Now, the red dates have already been ordered by merchants from Yili and Qingshui at 30 yuan per kg."

In 2003, Zhang Hong returned to his hometown in southern Xinjiang after working in Shenzhen. Seeing that his older brother's more than 200 mu jujube orchard was in urgent need of workers, he volunteered to help his brother manage the orchard. Through several years of study and practice, he accumulated rich experience in growing jujubes. He then had the idea of growing red dates himself, but he was troubled by not having farmland.

In 2010, due to marriage, Zhang Hong came to the 7th Company of the 64th Regiment and contracted 15 mu of wasteland to grow red dates. In red date cultivation, based on years of accumulated experience, he adopted the orchard-establishment method of direct sowing jujube seeds and grafting the following year to build a 15-mu red date orchard. When grafting the jujube trees, he selected a cold-resistant, drought-resistant, salt-alkali-tolerant variety - **Jun jujube, and interplanted cotton in the jujube grove. Hard work pays off. After a year of careful labor and scientific management, the cotton yield reached 300 kg per mu by the end of the year, covering all the costs of the first year when the jujube trees had no income.

During the interview, Zhang Hong said: Red date planting has no soil requirements. Red dates are highly adaptable, have a long growth cycle, produce quick results, save labor and time, and one person can manage more than 20 mu of orchard.

The next year, Zhang Hong's jujube trees began to bear fruit, but heaven did not favor him. In June, a catastrophic flood washed through his jujube seedlings, leaving low-lying land and fallen trees, and most of the jujube seedlings were buried. Looking at the flood-ravaged jujube seedlings barely clinging to life, Zhang Hong was not discouraged. He took his wife, cleared the silt, dug out the drowned seedlings, and replanted. In management, he weeded in time, opened ditches and built ridges in advance, and at the same time insisted on timely watering and topdressing urea to ensure normal fertilizer and water for the newly planted jujube seedlings. After a year of unremitting efforts, the jujube orchard regained its former vitality.

"Crops are like a flower; it all depends on fertilizer." Zhang Hong paid special attention to scientific management in tree pruning and organic fertilizer application. He said: "Every autumn, I apply 3 cubic meters of farmyard manure and 30 kg of compound fertilizer per mu to the jujube trees. When the soil is fertile and the nutrients are sufficient, the quality of the jujubes is good, and merchants like them at first sight." Under Zhang Hong's careful management, by 2013 the output value of his 15 mu of red date land reached 40,000 yuan, which gave Zhang Hong the confidence to continue with red dates.

In order to achieve high and stable red date yields, Zhang Hong read a large amount of scientific and technological material, listened to expert explanations, subscribed to science and technology newspapers and periodicals, went out for visits and study, and combined this with years of practice to develop a unique set of red date production and management techniques. In the winter of 2014, the Party branch of the 7th Company arranged for Zhang Hong to teach employees red date cultivation experience at the company's "Winter of Science and Technology" training class. So he unreservedly, in plain and easy-to-understand language, with vivid examples, and combined with his own practical experience, gave patient and meticulous explanations to all the company's employees, allowing the "secret manual" to be shared and achieving good results.

When the author asked about this year's red date sales, Zhang Hong said: "Last year, before the red dates were picked, there was continuous rain, and fruit cracking was serious, which led to a reduction in red date output. The price was not high, and sales were poor. I only earned more than 20,000 yuan." This year my red dates bore fruit in May, one month earlier than others. Previously, merchants came to look, and at 15 yuan per kg, they bought more than 1 ton of fresh jujubes. Some other merchants were not in a hurry to buy, because earlier high temperatures and high moisture made red dates prone to spoilage. They want to wait until after Frost's Descent to buy, to improve the quality of the red dates."

Having received good returns, Zhang Hong is full of confidence in taking the path of growing special red dates. Next year he plans to expand the scale of the jujube orchard and build his own drying room to improve quality, so that red dates can gain added value and efficiency after deep processing. During the interview, Zhang Hong said: Next, we plan to build a drying room to improve our production and processing quality. Under the current and future prospects, our red date industry still has a strong development trend, because red dates have a very wide range of uses. We will continue to work hard to make red date cultivation bigger and stronger.