The vegetable-growing story of Nong Chaozhi, the "Vegetable King"

    "In just over a month, these peppers and tomatoes will be ready for market. The cucumbers that came to market early in March brought in more than 5,000 yuan, and these peppers and tomatoes are new varieties being trial-planted!" Nong Chaozhi, who was weeding on the field ridge, pointed to the red-and-green vegetables and happily told this writer. 
     
    Nong Chaozhi is deputy director of the Bapeng Village Committee in Zhemiao Township, Tianlin County. After years of exploration, he has mastered a set of off-season vegetable cultivation techniques, and from vegetable growing alone his annual income reaches 30,000 yuan. 
     
    Bapeng Village in Zhemiao Township has plenty of farmland, but following traditional farming methods, people planted only one crop of rice a year, and the fertile paddy fields sat idle for more than half the year. Every inch of land is worth an inch of gold, so how could the land be made to yield gold? Nong Chaozhi kept mulling this over. Just as he was thinking hard about it, one incident gave him inspiration. That year, when the village was in the lean season for green vegetables, the villagers all went to town to buy greens. As a farmer with fields and land, having to buy greens left a bad taste in his mouth. Nong Chaozhi conducted careful research and found that the village had few vegetable varieties, and all were planted according to the seasons. "Plant off-season vegetables!" A light went on in Nong Chaozhi's mind: weren't off-season vegetables in the city selling very well? Didn't modern people like eating "green food"? Having identified the market, he set to work at once. In 2001, Nong Chaozhi tried planting peppers and tomatoes in the fields after the harvest. Tomatoes and peppers like shade, and conventionally they are suitable for planting in autumn and winter; Nong Chaozhi found that local conditions were also suitable for growing these vegetables. That year he planted several mu of tomatoes and peppers, which grew well, and he won his first battle; local people no longer had to run to town to buy these vegetables. At that time, the government was carrying out industrial restructuring in rural areas and encouraging villagers to plant vegetables each year after harvesting the rice. Nong Chaozhi's successful experience gave strong proof for the government's call, and Nong Chaozhi became even more determined to grow off-season vegetables. 
     
    Over the years, Nong Chaozhi kept practicing, boldly exploring and summarizing his planting experience, and worked out a set of off-season vegetable planting models: after the rice harvest in July, vegetables such as tomatoes and peppers can be planted in early August and harvested in October; from November, seedlings of early-maturing pumpkin, cucumber and other vegetables are raised, and they can come to market early from February to the end of March. 
     
    "Off-season vegetables may sell well, but in the end they still depend on science and technology." Nong Chaozhi feels this deeply after several years of planting. Because he had only a junior high school education and had never attended technical training, when he first started planting, poor growth and many pests and diseases often occurred. He went to the county agriculture bureau many times to consult professional technicians, but it was very inconvenient and could not solve the fundamental problem. For this reason, he bought various books and periodicals on vegetable cultivation techniques himself and even specially subscribed to a copy of the Southern Science and Technology News. Whenever he came across something he did not quite understand, he would call experts at the Guangxi Academy of Agricultural Sciences for advice. He said with emotion: "These days, no matter what you plant, you have to believe in science and pay attention to technology!" 
     
    One flower blooming alone is not spring; a hundred flowers blooming together fill the garden with spring. As the first person in Zhemiao Township to become rich by growing vegetables, Nong Chaozhi actively passed on his planting and management experience to the villagers, selflessly teaching the key techniques and experience of off-season vegetable cultivation to other vegetable farmers, and teaching them the techniques of off-season vegetable cultivation hand by hand. Driven by Nong Chaozhi, vegetable farmers in Bapeng Village and surrounding villages increased their annual income by 1,000 yuan, providing an extremely valuable development path for improving the efficiency and quality of the local vegetable industry. Huang Buding, who is over 60 years old and from the same village, had just joined the ranks of growing off-season vegetables this year. He said: "Seeing Deputy Director Nong lead everyone to prosperity by growing vegetables, I want to join in too!" 

    This year, Nong Chaozhi is full of ambition. He has newly bought a ridging machine, and he says that this year he will not only plant vegetables on all 8 mu of his family's paddy fields, but also rent other people's fields to plant, further expanding the planting scale and increasing the vegetable varieties.